City of the Dead and The World Exhibitions is the concluding part of Julian Samuel's video documentary trilogy on the relationship between the West and Islamic and Third Worlds.
This part looks at the rise of fundamentalism, the role of architecture in gender segregation in the historical and contemporary Islamic city, British and French laws of dispossession; the influence of the turn-of-the-century World Exhibitions in creating a picture of the Orient, and terrorism in contemporary Egypt. The work features interviews with Janet Abu-Lughod (Before European Hegemony, The World System AD 1250-1350); Akbar S. Ahmad, (Postmodernism and Islam); Hussien Ahmed Amin (Egyptian ex-ambassador to Algeria); Edwar Al-Kharrat, (The Girls of Alexandria); Max Rodenbeck (Egypt From the Air); Timothy Mitchell (Colonising Egypt).