One of the most popular ribbons of film from the dawn of motion pictures was “Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance,” released for viewing in 1897 in Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope peepshow machine.
Details on the film’s production are sketchy, and some film historians are uncertain about the lady on screen. Most likely, it was Fatima Djemille, a Syrian-born dancer who performed in Coney Island’s “Streets of Cairo” exhibition. Fatima tapped into the then-current fascination with Middle Eastern belly dancing and offered a jolly performance where she shook her curvaceous body in the manner that would have delighted the sultans and caliphs of a bygone era.
Of course, the women in 1897 had significantly more conservative values than today’s twerking babes, and the gyrating Fatima titillated without showing her tits. Indeed, the only bare flesh on display are her arms, which don’t seem very erotic today must have raised more than a few tentpoles back at the end of the 19th century.
This production is famous for having fence-like mesh bars abruptly appear over Fatima’s breasts and hips, obscuring some of her movements but still leaving plenty for the imagination. Some sources claim this was the first example of film censorship – but how was that possible, considering no film censorship entity existed in 1897? Most likely, that was the Edison team doing a humorous joke at the expense of male viewers who were going into salivary overdrive with Fatima’s raucous bump-and-grind act.