CAIRO - THE grand master of Arab cinema, Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine, died at the age of 82 in Cairo on Sunday after an often controversial career which spanned half a century.

For a man already in his 80s and who was credited with introducing art-house movies to the Arab world, his last work Chaos (released last year with the Arabic title of Heya Fawda) pulled no punches.

'He skewers political parties and Islamists', was the verdict of the film industry's Variety magazine.

Chahine was airlifted to hospital in Paris after suffering a brain haemorrhage and falling into a coma on June 14, with the Egyptian state footing the bill. He was returned to Egypt still comatose on July 16.

'I am young. I am only 81 years old', Chahine told a press conference at the Venice Film Festival last September. 'I hope I can keep working for another 10 years. Old age is to let oneself become old.'

Chahine won official plaudits for his pioneering role in Egypt's film industry and was awarded the Cannes festival's 50th anniversary lifetime achievement award in 1997.

But he has never shied away from controversy, criticising US foreign policy as well as Egypt and the Arab world.

Chahine made his first of 44 movies in 1950 and it was he who discovered and launched the career of fellow Egyptian Omar Sharif, who then shot to stardom with Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.

Chahine who had a French wife but no children, maintained a long association with France, including his 1985 film Adieu Bonaparte about Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798.

And in 1992, he successfully directed a version of Albert Camus's Caligula at the Comedie Francaise theatre in Paris, before being awarded the Order of Merit by France's then president Jacques Chirac in 2006. -- AFP