Politics and nostalgia, however, are not so easily disentangled and separated. Ambivalence continues to hover over ‘Abd al-Halim, even as the official recuperation and appropriation of his art is underway. The revolutionary overtones of the films cannot be easily ignored. These are tales of young love prevailing despite the will of the old order and the tired patriarchs who preside over it, of wit, humour and charm overcoming the adversity of fate, stories that now seem to brim with the anti-colonial, nationalist and revolutionary sentiments of their day. The still insistent claim that 'Abd al-Halim’s films are 'for women’ betokens a more contemporary political anxiety, and an effort to put them out of harm’s way. Their aggressively modern sexual politics are a more obvious issue. In the contemporary climate of extreme conservatism, 'Abd al-Halim’s last film, Abi Fawq al-Shajjara (1969), still has the power to shock…