Kayro Jacobi, juste avant l'oubli
Tout commence dans les studios de la Kayro Films, lorsque le producteur et réalisateur juif égyptien Kayro Jacobi s'alarme d'un article dénonçant l'omnipotence et la décadence des cinéastes «étrangers» dont les films pervertissent le véritable visage de l'Égypte. Nasser vient d'arriver au pouvoir. Les studios produisent toujours leurs flopées de comédies musicales et de mélodrames lascifs, libres un temps encore de toute censure puritaine. Le cinéma égyptien est alors le phare du cinéma oriental, sa Mecque, son Hollywood, et Kayro en est l'enfant chéri. Il est, à trente-cinq ans, le roi du cinéma populaire de son pays, reconnu par ses pairs, courtisé par les étoiles du grand écran, follement aimé des femmes et cible toute désignée de la presse xénophobe. Attaqué et humilié, Kayro le magnifique entre en résistance.
Dans ce roman jubilatoire où culmine son art de la tragi-comédie, Paula Jacques ressuscite les riches heures du cinéma égyptien et poursuit son exploration de la comédie des passions humaines.
- Bleue
- Paru le 11/03/2010
- Genre : Littérature française
- 336 pages - 140 x 205 mm
- EAN : 9782715226210
- ISBN : 9782715226210
Foreign Rights
Kayro Jacobi, juste avant l'oubli
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Presentation
Cairo in the Fifties. Kayro Jacobi, an Egyptian Jew, is a prosperous film producer and director. At 35 he is already king of Egypt's popular cinema. He owes his flourishing career to the fortune brought by his wife Noma and to his first films' success. Loved by women and admired by his peers, Kayrp is nevertheless targeted by Egypt's xenophobic press and accused of propagating a a tarnished image of Egypt. Fascinated by American cinema, Kayro is delighted when Howard Hawks lands in Egypt in 1954 to shoot Land of the Pharaohs and he gets to participate in this exhilarating adventure. He has to return in haste to Cairo however when his two sisters disappear after being summoned by the police. Kayro Jacobi moves heaven and earth to try and find them, but in vain. Relations between Israel and the Nasser Regime are becoming increasingly strained and these are dangerous times for members of the Jewish community. Attacked on all sides, humiliated, his only ally is his wife, but Norma sinks into a deep depression when their baby is still-born. Fifty years later, in 2007, a novelist begins to investigate Kayro Jacobi's strange disappearance. When she manages to find some of his old friends, she gets to hear the story of Kayro the Magnificent and of his struggle. A glimpse into the life of an eccentric and fascinating man and the golden age of Egyptian cinema.
Paula Jacques is the author of several novels published by Mercure de France, amongst which Gilda Stambouli souffre et se plaint and Rachel Rose et l’officier arabe in which she explores the comedy of human passions. She received the Femina Prize for Deborah et les anges dissipés.
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