WMF Organizes a Movie Screening of “Miss Hanafi”
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The Women and Memory Forum (WMF) organized a screening of the Egyptian film “Miss Hanafi” (Al-Anisa Hanafi) on 5 July 1999, at the WMF headquarters in Cairo. The movie screening was followed by a short paper presentation entitled “Hanafi/Fifi and the Social Construction of Gender,” delivered by Walid al-Hamamsy.
In his paper, al-Hamamsy argues that the transgender protagonist –male Hanafi and later female Fifi— serves to convey that gender roles are primarily socially constructed. The paper focuses on narrative functions, paradigm shifts, camera work, editing, and lighting, among other systems of signification that visually and perceptually depict Hanafi/Fifi as essentially a social product, shaped by the various socially (un)accepted norms at work in his/her environment.
“Al-Anisa Hanafi” is a comedy directed by Fateen Abd al-Wahab and debuted in 1954.
