Film Enthusiast in Alexandria Turns His Home into a Museum of Egyptian Cinema
(AWP) - For fifty years fuelled by his love for documenting history, Makram Salama has been collecting everything related to twentieth-century Egyptian cinema at his home in the city of Alexandria, northern Egypt.
Salama recounts falling in love with cinema since his childhood in the city of Naga Hammadi in Upper Egypt, where he used to watch films at the city’s three cinemas every week.
Upon relocating to the coastal city of Alexandria, his passion expanded to collecting photographs and old film posters, as well as film distribution documents, until his house started to resemble a museum for Egyptian cinema’s precious cultural heritage.
Salama said, "I collected posters of Oum Kulthoum, [Mohamed] Abdel Wahab, Abdel Halim Hafez and Hussein Sedki. I got the Hussein Sedki poster from his office."
"Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, and those three, I found them among 9000 [film] negatives that were with some guy in a bag, so I took them home."
He added, "The existing collection includes all the presidents of Egypt, starting from Mohamed Naguib to [Anwar] Sadat, and is present in its entirety. There is also the opening of the High Dam, the railway, the post office, and all public life in Egypt is documented on negatives and because this is the original image, I keep it with me."
Salama explains his enthusiasm for cinema and history, expressing his concern that, “I feel that history is being lost, so I collect these things and revive them by preserving them and displaying them to the people."