DER Documentary

El Moulid - Egyptian Religious Festival

From the Egypt series
by Fadwa El Guindi
color, 38 min, 1990

Pricing information and conditions

Moulid (spoken Arabic meaning “birth”) refers to a public religious festival celebrating the life and legacy of a holy person. The film vividly captures the festive and religious mood of the very 700-year old moulid of the 13th century Muslim Wali, Sayyid Ahmad Al-Badawy, held annually in Tanta, Egypt during cotton harvest.

Using “layering” as a method, this visual ethnography analyzes the moulid’s structure and symbolism, revealing various levels of religious experience – scriptural, mystical, ritual, mythical, interacting with secular traditional life. It culminates in a dramatic procession following the Friday public prayer led by the khalifa (Badawy’s current successor) on horseback, followed by drummers on camels, a Sufi parade, workers representing medieval vocational guilds, and finally circumcised boys in horse carriages. A transmission of vigorous masculinity and potent spirituality is symbolized as a journey from boyhood to manhood embedded in a regenerative cycle from life to death to rebirth.

About Egypt series
Fadwa El Guindi is currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Qatar; founding director and research anthropologist at El Nil Research in Los Angeles; and Co-Editor of the new social science journal Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life. In addition to her innovative, award-winning films, she is widely published and gives lectures and workshops internationally on Arab and Muslim Americans. Her renowned expertise on the Middle East has been sought by the media, the UN, and the US government. Her most recent book, Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory, is available from AltaMira Press.

Recommended for use in courses on archaeology, general anthropology, material culture, rural Arab culture, and rural arts and crafts.

Film Festivals, Screenings, Awards
Royal Anthropological Institute, International Festival of Ethnographic Film, England, 1990
Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York, 1990
Bilan du film Ethnographique, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, 1990
International Film Festival for Women Directors, American Film Institute, Los Angeles, 1992

Other films from the Egypt series:
El Sebou' - Egyptian Birth Ritual
Ghurbal