Zouba el Keloubatiya Shamadan 1946
  • 6 years ago
This clip is from the 1946 film Al-khamsa Gneih ( The Five Pounds) The scene takes place in a bar. The singer is Hamed Taher and he is singing a Mawaal. The dancer is Zouba el Keloubatiya. She is draped from head to foot in assuit fabric and coins and she is even wearing a triangular coin hipscarf made of assuit. Her costume is noteworthy because it proves that the coin costume was not an American invention from the 1970's nor was the coin costume invented by American fashion designers. Coin costumes and coin hipscarves were being worn in Egypt long before raqs sharqi ever became popular in the west as is proven by this dancer and many others who were captured on film. There are many early film clips of Egyptian dancers wearing coin costumes and I have uploaded several of them on this channel.  The shamadan Zouba has on her head is of an extraordinarly large size, so much that you can't ever see the top of it. She is not listed in the film credits.
The star of this film is a five pound Egyptian note, who becomes bored with being stored inside of a metal safe so it decides to fly out of the box and go see the world. The five pound bill is then found by a poor street cleaner who is thrilled at his good fortune in finding the money. The bill travels from person to person and the film highlights the good deeds and the bad deeds of each person who owns the 5 pound bill.