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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
Meeting Soheir Abdel-Qader, the director of the Cairo Film Festival for Children, was no easy task. Not that she doesn't make herself available. It is just nigh on impossible to fit oneself onto her agenda, what with three telephones ringing to the urgent appeals of both national and international calls, the fax machine ticking away like a maddened clock and a dozen or more assistants flitting in and out of her office.
Soheir is the dynamo behind both the children's festival, and the Cairo International Film Festival too. She finishes with one only to start on the other -- a real organiser, surrounded by a group of young, carefully selected assistants who help her out in this tremendous task.
The result is just one innovation after another. "This year", she told me, "we have decided to have a special programme for handicapped children -- the deaf and dumb. One cinema, the Karim, will be reserved for them. There will be special translations that they can understand, and all the profits from the festival will be donated to the Organisation for the Handicapped Child."
The children's film festival has recently become affiliated to the International Centre of Films for Children and Young People -- proof that the last eight editions were a success with the profession, as well as with the public. The president of the Centre, Jerzy Maskovich, will chair this year's international jury for features and short films. Soheir is proud of the many celebrities in the field who will be sitting on the jury this year, among them Jean-Jacques Mitterrand, president of the General Agency of French Films for Childhood and Youth. "There are also members from Germany, Canada, Poland, India, Guinea, Syria and Tunisia," she told me, "and from Egypt, we have UNICEF representative Nagwa Farag." All the members of the jury are people who have a record of serious contributions to the culture of childhood, even though they long since ceased to be children themselves.
This year, competition for the jury's favours will be more intense than ever. There are 34 countries taking part in the festival, and they have submitted between them some 186 films, including those which are hors concours. The official competition itself is divided up into two main sections, as Soheir explained to me. "There are 13 films from ten countries in the features and short films category, and 22 cartoons and telefilms." Of the 34 countries which will be represented, five are Arab: Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
This feast of moving images for the young (and not-so-young) will be spread across 11 cinemas, with Karim reserved for the deaf and dumb. But even that is not enough to satisfy Soheir. "There will be mobile shows at 60 different venues throughout Egypt," she told me, "including social centres in the governorates, the libraries of the Comprehensive Care Society, culture houses and palaces, kindergartens and public schools. This will be a wonderful opportunity for children who cannot attend the cinema screenings." Journalists and critics, for their part, will be able to view the films in the comparative tranquillity of the small hall of the Opera House.
Special arrangements, I had heard, are being made with the Egyptian Radio and Television Union to advertise the festival. I asked Soheir if she could tell me more. "The Minister of Information has kindly agreed to air advertisements for the festival films free of charge." she confided. "There will also be daily TV coverage of the festival."
There is no doubt that the children's film festival is now established as a tradition in our artistic and cultural life on an equal footing with the International Film Festival for adults. Soheir agrees: "The great care and support we have had from both the government and public and private organisations proves that."
She is too modest to say it, perhaps, but it is a success in which she herself has played a crucial part.
