Shaima Ahmed Farouk
Posted on: Wednesday, April 5, 2023 – 6:55 PM | Last update: Wednesday, April 5, 2023 – 6:55 PM
Over the years of artistic giving, Ismail Abdel Hafez was able to engrave a prominent name in the world of Egyptian drama, dozens of works that he presented during and outside the Ramadan drama season, in cooperation with Osama Anwar Okasha and other authors.
Abdel Hafez left a clear imprint with works that have not been forgotten, and talk regarding them is still scattered on social media platforms, “Al-Wasiya, The Nights of Helmiyyah in its Parts, Witness and Tears, My Aunt Safia and the Monastery, The Family, The Republic of Zifta, A Woman from the Time of Love, Canarya and Co., Friends, and the Demons of Sila.” , and other TV series engraved in everyone’s memory.
Director Ismail Abdel Hafez was born in March 1941 in Kafr El-Sheikh Governorate. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Oriental Languages from Ain Shams University in 1963, and worked as an assistant director on television from 1964-1969 in the children’s monitoring departments, then plays, then a drama director, then a first director in 1970. Where he directed his first work, “People and Money”, to launch his journey with the TV drama.
Over the course of a number of different episodes, we get to know the deceased closely through the book “The People’s Exit”, written by Dr. Sameh Mahran, and from the publications of the General Book Authority and the Egyptian Academy of Arts.
Abdel Hafez focused during his series on different issues, and worked with various screenwriters to express different ideas, with varying differences between the writers and some of them, but what unites his work is the existence of an issue that he seriously tries to raise for discussion and alert, and this is what he stated in various dialogues.
He said in an interview with the Radio and Television magazine: “I am always interested in work of value, which contains serious content, and these values and serious contents I like to address in my work, because I consider art a message that I believed in since the beginning of my steps in the early seventies and until now I have made sure not to present to people Except what carries a message of interest to the Egyptian citizen in particular and the Arab in general.
The time of this dialogue was during the filming of the series “A Woman from the Time of Love”, starring Samira Ahmed, Ahmed Khalil, Youssef Shaaban, Shweikar, and a group of young stars at the time, such as Karim Abdelaziz, Yasmine Abdelaziz, Jihan Fadel, Muhammad Riyad, and the story and dialogue of Osama Anwar Okasha. .
Abdel Hafez mentioned the reason for initiating this work, that he wanted to discuss the crisis of morals and distance from the original values that the series calls on everyone to adhere to, and a call to distance from values and customs that are not related to society, specifically the phenomenon of Satanists that were widespread in that era, and it was a loyal personality. “Samira Ahmed” is the model that Okasha and Abdel Hafez are trying to present to represent authentic values.
Abdel Hafez believed that the audience gathered around the good work, regardless of the point of mass production, and he said: “For example, the series A Woman from the Time of Love, as it is a series that is watched by a simple salons series, and it has a limited number of artists, and yet it met with the audience’s admiration, because the lesson is in making the work.” The good, its integration, the intensity of its attachment to people and their problems, and its expression of the pulse of the street, and whenever people feel this pulse, they gather around the work and admire it.
