I saw Les Biches last night at the French Center, the second movie I’ve seen in Cairo about lesbians, the first was Egyptian, they must be obsessed in this country. The audience, all young men, acted like children seeing Playboy Magazine for the first time. But a decent movie by Cairo standards.
-Letter Home, November 22, 1978
The French and Italian Cultural Centers had weekly film screenings for movies that would never get past the Egyptian censors for commercial release. They entered the country in diplomatic pouches, the way Western embassies get good liquor into Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, booze was legal and there were plenty of bordellos if you knew where to look, but no naked European women in clean sheets.