The director of seven shorts and seven fulllength feature films Saleh graduated in 1949 in English literature and was trained in cinema in Paris until 1951 Tewfik Salehs oeuvre is the only one in Egyptian cinema which may be considered purely Third Worldist All his films deal with social injustice underdevelopment political abuse and the class struggle His first film Darb almahabil 1955 cowritten by Najeeb Mahfouz was set in a popular neighborhood but represented a kind of allegory of greed and materialism dismantling the opportunism of the alleys inhabitants who chase a mentally retarded homeless person after they learn he has won the lottery It took Saleh another seven years to direct his Sira alabtal 1962 set during the cholera epidemic of the 1930s It featured Shukri Sarhan as a leftist country doctor who battles not only against the disease but also against the peasants ignorance the midwifes intrigues and the egocentric interests of the feudal landowner Salehs next films were produced by the General Film Organization His Yaumiyat naib filaryaf 1968 taken from Taufiq alHakims novel counts among the best adaptations Yet he often came up against censorship and bureaucracy Almoutamarridoune 1968 and Alsayyid bulti 1967 in English Mister Fish both had to wait two years until their release In the case of Mister Fish which deals with the struggle of working fishermen against a monopolist the censor used a scene of two young women occupied with removing the hair from their legs to postpone the release of the film Finally in the early 70s Saleh left the country His Almakhduun 1972 produced by the Syrian National Film Organization and adapted from Ghassan Kanafanis novel Men Under the Sun was one of the first Arab films to move away from a melodramatic approach to the Palestinian question and to express scepticism regarding regarding panArab solidarity Salehs last feature Alayyam altawila 1980 was produced by the Iraqi Theatre and Film Organization and presented Saddam Hussein as a patriotic guerilla Saleh who had moved to Iraq in 1973 in order to teach cinema returned to Egypt in the mid1980s to teach at the Higher Film Institute
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