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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Supplement Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The first sign of spring?
By Hani Mustafa
Mohsena Tawfiq and Ahmed Azmi in Signs
of April photos: Randa ShaathEvery now and then Egyptian television attempts to elbow in on the cinema industry, producing films destined to be shown not only on the small screen but also in movie houses. Generally, it is the television production sector that is behind such initiatives, though the most recent example of this phenomena has been through the Nile specialised channels sector, which has set itself the Herculean task of presenting the experiments of a new generation of film-makers by giving them the opportunity to make short features and documentaries.
Alamat Ibril (Signs of April), directed by Ahmed Maher, who also wrote the scenario, is the first such film. Alamat Ibril presents the stagnant, silent life of two sisters -- Fawqiya, played by Mohsena Tawfiq, the headmistress of a secondary school, and Hoda, played by Salwa Khattab, a teacher in the same school. The film focuses on the disruptions that occur in the fixed routine of the two sisters following the arrival of a student, Sherif, played by newcomer Ahmed Azmi, who needs private tutoring in maths.
Hoda is over-interested in her pupil and Fawqiya, too, tries to get closer to him -- asking him to fix the TV aerial, damaged in a storm. The sisters' conflicting interests very quickly develop into a major quarrel, and the film ends with the boy on the roof, leaving open-ended the question of whether stability will return to the sisters' shared life or whether the crack in their relationship will prove irreparable.
"The goal," Ahmed Maher says, "that I have tried to reach in the film is to allow a space for the spectator's imagination. The film gives only a few details of these two sisters' lives. You can't really gauge the degree to which they become estranged -- rather, spaces have been left for guesses and hypotheses."
Within the introverted, seemingly self-sufficient household of the sisters, the camera moves voyeuristically, breathlessly presenting events. The sisters' shared life is confined: they go to school and then they come home. And from the first scene it is made quite clear that they share everything: flat, food, and workplace. Half-way into the film the extent of their sharing is dramatically revealed when Hoda tells Sherif that she and Fawqiya divided their father's ties between them following his death. Maher's aim "is not to challenge conventional directorial modes. Breaks with such conventions already happened decades ago, with Pasolini and Goddard. My aim is simply to make a film and to me it is mere coincidence that the camera stopped at this particular home and recorded what takes place inside. It could have stopped in front of another home with another story."
The camera is almost human in its movement as it records events, operating according to the same logic as a human eye observing, a rationale that becomes apparent when the two women leave for work, their movements registered from behind the window pane. It follows Fawqiya as she moves towards the door to observe her leaving the house, and after Fawqiya goes out the front door, quickly pans to observe Hoda leaving, except there is a wall beside the window that blocks the view.
Ihab Mohamed Ali, director of photography, succeeds in making the camera's movements seem natural, uncontrived and smooth, replicating techniques most commonly used in news reporting, where the camera tries simply to record the news item and sometimes shakes, sometimes even out-of-focus.
In the brochure distributed at the screening Maher writes of the camera movement "as an attempt to legitimise curiosity... when hypothesis becomes more important than knowledge, even when wrong, becomes more pleasurable than truth".
Because the camera does not follow any strict formulaic rules, it required a massive effort on the part of monteur Khaled Marei, who develops an equally daring, unconventional principle of montage. Rough cuts are employed, giving an almost primitive feel to the film, close to video techniques.
The narrative elements serve to present an intensifying atmosphere of desire, and contributing to the film's depth and complexity. During the sandstorm, when Hoda sends Sherif to buy her a pack of cigarettes, Fawqiya talks into an old 1950s tape recorder, voicing feelings about her life in general and the khamasin sandstorms in particular. And underlying it all is her sense of danger, a premonition of the dislocation in her life brought about by the boy's entry into it. And as the film, and sandstorm, progresses, the colour yellow becomes increasingly dominant, functioning as a symbolic correlative of the dramatic change that Sherif has brought to the quiet home.
The spirit of experimentation at the heart of Alamat Ibril extends to the soundtrack by Fathi Salama: the rebab is accompanied by doublebass and musical themes do not correspond to audience expectations. The music accompanying the opening credits builds up to a climax only to suddenly stop while the credits continue to roll in silence. And though music accompanies each scene, it only becomes noticeable at the close of each, heightening dramatic impact and the intensity of feeling, and revealing its centrality to the filmic style.
So does this experiment by Ahmed Maher, backed by the specialised channels and its president Hassan Hamed, the producer of the film, constitute more than a stone thrown into the stagnant pond of cinematic production? Or can one hope that it is the beginning of an organised plan, a plan capable of furnishing sufficient impetus to revitalise an ailing industry?
