No Social Taboos Left Out

This year's class of student directors at the film school in Cairo are distinguished by their artistic courage. Their graduation projects boast blatant caricatures of dictators, the army and the veil, as Sayyid Mahmoud reports

At a screening of films made by the students at the film school in Cairo, organized by the Goethe Institute, five short films were shown, including "Salweit" by Hisham Fathi, "Dear friend" by Marwa Ali ad Din, and "Monday" by Tamer al Said. In addition, nine animated films were shown.

In an interview with Qantara.de, the director of the Egyptian film school, Fauzi Sulaiman, emphasizes that the presentation of these films brings to fruit the persistent efforts of the film club, which is an annex of the film school.

Awards at international festivals for Egyptian films

Several years ago the film club started searching for new talent in an effort to systematically support new cinema. The creative work of these new filmmakers has received the attention it deserved due to the club's backing.

Fauzi Sulaiman mentions some newcomers who have quickly become professional and have won awards at international festivals, for example the filmmakers Hala Khalil and Kamila Abu Zikri.

Sulaiman also stresses the importance of the close collaboration between the Goethe Institute and the Egyptian film school. They organized workshops with German screenplay instructors and encouraged Egyptian filmmakers to become involved in student films, some of which have been screened in recent film festivals such as the one in Munich.

Poking fun at the army

This year Sulaiman was impressed with the student films' professionalism, their perfection in both form and content, and the artistic boldness with which taboo subjects were taken up.

For example, Amgad Mohsin's animated film "There is no mercy" pokes fun at the army and its hierarchical structures. The film deals with an army general named Abu Sari and the way he interacts with the soldiers in his company.

Some of the films that deserve mention address the subject of violence and the arbitrariness of the social world. This issue was dealt with above all in the animated films, for example the above-mentioned "There is no mercy," and "There is no reason."

These films are impressive because they show how professional the animated form can be. Sulaiman says that these filmmakers usually end up working in advertising because Arabic television and film producers do not include animation in their budgets.

Perhaps this will change due to a recent suggestion made by the critic Ahmad Abd al Al, who proposed that the Egyptian education ministry should begin a collaboration with the film school. The idea is to harness the creative skills of animation filmmakers for educational purposes and for example to simplify curricula.

Not a single documentary

Audiences were particular taken by the daring story told in the film "Salweit" by Hisham Fathi, which addresses the issue of the veil worn by Egyptian women. A man and his son find themselves unable to identify their wife and mother among the other veiled women in the streets.

Some of the short films are literary adaptations, for example "What will we dream of?" by Husam al Djawhari, which is based on the story "The River Nile" by Egyptian author Salwa Bakr. Or the film "I'll buy your brain" by Shadi Georg, which takes up a story by author Yusuf Izz Al Din Isa.

Not a single documentary was among the final projects shown by the film school graduates — a sign that this genre is currently in crisis in Egyptian cinema.

Dr. Khaled Abd al Djalil, an instructor at the Institute for Film, thinks that it is not the film school itself that should take responsibility for this, but the students, who simply have other priorities when they plan their curricula, despite the fact that documentary filmmaking will earn them the same number of points as fictional films.

The jury, made up of critics Safa al Laithi and Ahmad Abd al-Al as well as Dr. Azza Mashali, awarded Marwa Ali ad-Din a prize for her film "Dear Friend," which also received the audience award. The film symbolically addresses death and combines cinematic and theatrical elements.

Another audience prize was awarded for the animated film "Message about a death," which directly addresses Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Sayyid Mahmoud

Translation from German: Christina White

Qantara.de

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