Around the third century BC, Alexandria grew to be the cultural centre of the Mediterranean. Greeks mingled with the native Egyptians and with immigrants from Palestine, Syria, and Persia. It was the first large cosmopolitan-city in the modern sense; and it produced the first big-city blues.
A group of intellectuals, disillusioned with the old gods and the old values, started to write poetry which reflected their jaded and amoral spirit. They abandoned the Greek tradition of 'big' themes in public art and delved into the private world of emotion, expressing individual inadequacy, doubt, regret for the first time in literature.
This film reproduces much of the poetry of the original Alexandrians and traces the line from them to Oscar Wilde and other modern authors who have been influenced by the Alexandrian spirit, such as Lawrence Durrell and the Greek poet Cavafy. It tries to recapture in the modern Egyptian city the flavour of ancient Alexandria.
Written and directed by Lucy Goodison