Virtual Screening: Nadine Nour el Din’s “roads through the city”

Join us for a virtual screening of Nadine Nour el Din’s short film roads through the city, plus a conversation with Nour el Din, artist Ibrahim Ahmed, and ICA Executive Director Dominic Asmall Willsdon.

Created in response to Ibrahim Ahmed’s video work Tuk Tuk Diaries, on view at the ICA as part of the exhibition It Always Comes Back to You, Nadine Nour el Din’s roads through the city contextualises Ahmed’s journey in a Tuk Tuk vehicle in the informal neighbourhood Ardellewa, to trace a history of journeying through cities in Egypt. With a greater emphasis on the capital Cairo, the film travels through Alexandria, Luxor and Sinai. Nour el Din employs the use of film to trace a physical and historical journey.

roads through the city explores a journey through the Egyptian city, pieced together using footage from Egyptian films. Scenes depict a diverse set of characters traversing the city. Arranged chronologically, the footage spans films from modern to contemporary Egypt, dating from the early 1950s until 2017.

As the film flows, meandering in and out of some of the most iconic films in Egyptian cinema, featuring various stars negotiating their journey through the urban sensorium, the city itself becomes the star. Urban landscapes and architecture change, cars multiply, and the sounds of the city intensify. Moments in each of the selected scenes reference the complex social and political context of a modernising Egypt, tracing a historical progression through time. The film touches on notions of gender, masculinity, urban narratives, architecture, and cars, that in addition to relating to themes in Tuk Tuk Diaries and Ahmed’s practice, maintain a wider socio-political resonance.

Nadine Nour el Din is a researcher and cultural practitioner. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from the American University in Cairo, an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently pursuing an MA in Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art.

Her academic, artistic, curatorial, and research work focuses on the arts and cultural production of the Arab world and wider region.