Towards a minor cinema: a Deleuzian reflection on Chahine's Alexandria Why? (1978)

Abstract

In his description of modern political cinema, Gilles Deleuze touches rather briefly on Youssif Chahine's Alexandria Why? (1979) as he explains how it subscribes to minor cinema. He ascribes to Chahine's film the quality of a ‘compositional mode’, which Deleuze categorises as the third characteristic of minor cinema. The aim of this paper is, therefore, not only to elaborate on the Deleuzian view discussed in his book Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985) but also to examine extensively how Chahine's film blurs or conforms to the other characteristics of minor cinema. The paper furthermore explores Deleuze's three descriptions of modern political cinema in relation to Deleuze and Guatarri's conceptual understanding of minor literature as explicated in their book Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1975).