| farah ashraf |
Les Frères Frenkel were among the first animators in Egypt and are best known for directing the film series Meshmesh Effendi between the years 1936 and 1947. The brothers Herschel, Salomon and David Frenkel were Jews of Ashkenazi origin who settled in Egypt during the First World War. They established in Cairo The first studio in Egypt to make animated films - Frenkel Animated Pictures. Their parents, Nahum and Gneiss Frenkel, had emigrated from Belarus in 1905, in light of the persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire at the time, and settled in the city of Jaffa. After the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman authorities mistreated immigrants from countries hostile to the Ottoman Empire, so the Frenkel family immigrated to Egypt, which was then under British care, and settled in Alexandria. Nahum Frenkel established a workshop for the manufacture of furniture in a Chinese style that became successful and famous among the city’s wealthy people. Despite the family’s success in the field of furniture manufacturing, Nahum Frenkel and his sons were amateurs specialized in filmmaking, so they decided to establish an animation film studio in Cairo in 1951. With the increase in tension between Arabs and Jews in light of the 1948 war, the Frenkel family decided to leave Egypt and immigrated to France. The three brothers continued making animated films in France with new cartoon characters until 1964, the year in which they directed their last film.
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