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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 January 2000 Issue No. 464 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 January 2000 Issue No. 464
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Cinema Al-Arabiya Al-Mo'assira (Contemporary Arab Cinema),Samir Farid, Cairo: The Supreme Council for Culture publications,1998. pp260
Monthly supplement
The barber of Baghdad
Ard Al-Sawad (Land of Darkness), a novel in three volumes, Abdel-Rahman Mounif, Beirut and Casablanca: Al-Mou'assassa Al-Arabiya Lildirasta wal-Nashr (Beirut), Al-Markaz Al-Thaqafi Al-Arabi Lil-Nashr wal-Tawzi (Casablanca) 1999.Fiction and reality
Abdel-Rahman Mounif
Chinese monuments and miracles
Al-Seen: Mo'jizat Nihayat Al-Qarn Al-Ishreen (China: Miracle of the End of the 20th Century ), Ibrahim Nafie, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Translation and Publishing 1999. pp200Deep roots, shallow soil
Landmarks in the History of the Communist Party of the Sudan in the half century 1946 - 1996, Mohamed Said al-Qaddal, Beirut: Dar Al-Farabi, 1999. pp310Cinematic maladies
Al-Cinema Al-Arabiya Al-Mo'assira (Contemporary Arab Cinema),Samir Farid, Cairo: The Supreme Council for Culture publications,1998. pp260Horses in the desert night
Night & Horses & the Desert, An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, Robert Irwin, London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press. pp462Heritage in the balance
The Arabic Literary Heritage: the Development of its Genres and Criticism, Roger Allen, Cambridge University Press, 1998. pp437Summer torments
Azhar al-Shams (Flowers of the Sun),Youssef Rakha, Cairo: Sharqiat Publishing House, 1999. pp143Hill of evil counsel Tal Al-Hawa ,Youssef Abu Raya, Cairo: Al-Hilal Novels, 1999. pp146
Century, conceived and edited by Bruce Bernard, London: Phaidon Press, 1999. pp1120 --see caption--
To the editor
At a glance
A shorthand guide to the month compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani* Al-Faylaq (The Corps), Amin Ezzeddin, Cairo: Fustat Publishing House, 1999. pp174
* Ana Baqqa wa Adel Hammouda (Adel Hammouda and Me), Ahmed Fouad Negm, Cairo: Zeinab Publishing House, 2000. pp108
* Jamal Eddin Al-Afghani, El-Sayed Youssef,Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 1999. pp255
* Masirat Hayati Hatta 1964 (The Course of My Life to 1964), Mohamed Youssef El-Guindi, Cairo: Organisation for Cultural Palaces, 1999. pp208
* Al-Mohammashoun wa Al-Siyasa fi Misr (The Marginalised and Politics in Egypt), Amani Massoud El-Heddini, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, 1999. pp302
* Al-Kotob: Wughat Nazar (Books: Viewpoints), monthly magazine, issue no. 12, January 2000, Cairo: The Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publication
* Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, January 1999, Cairo: Al-Hilal Publishing House
* Al-Arabi, monthly magazine, issue no. 494, January 2000, Kuwait: Ministry of Information
* Sotour (Lines), monthly magazine, issue no. 39, December 1999, Cairo: Sotour Publications
* Al-Osour Al-Jadida (New Eras), monthly magazine, issue no. 3, 2000, Cairo: Sinai Publishing House
* Adab wa Naqd (Literature and Criticism), monthly literary magazine, issue no. 172, December 1999, Cairo: Progressive Nationalist Unionist Party publications
To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.
Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross
"Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996
Cinematic maladies
Samir Farid's lengthy Al-Cinema Al-Arabiya Al-Mo'assira is divided into two parts of roughly equal length. The first gives an account of Arab cinema and the film industry in the Arab Mashriq and in Egypt in particular, while the second gives an alphabetical list of award-winning films of all categories and lengths from all the Arab countries.
Farid begins the first half of his book, which contains 20 chapters, by giving a series of definitions of the various technical terms that he will be using in the course of the study. 'Cinema', 'contemporaniety' and the roles of 'creativity' and film 'criticism' are thus defined. From here, the author explains how in his view the 1967 War was a turning point in Arab history, marking the beginning of the contemporary culture in which we are still living. This too might thus be seen as an exercise in definition. He then clarifies the difference between 'Arab cinema' and 'Arab films'; these are terms sometimes used synonymously by critics, but, Farid remarks, in fact they denote rather different things. The first signifies the reception of films, either local and foreign, in cinemas, on video or on TV, while the second of course refers to the films themselves. The main focus of Farid's attention remains the culture associated with cinema and not merely the local production of individual films.
These definitions are necessary because they establish the ground on which Farid's approach to Arab cinema is founded, but it is in the following chapters that Farid gets to the meat of his study, shedding light on the interrelated problems of film culture and the film market in the Arab world. Farid's detailed description of the maladies of Arab cinema, in which he pays special attention to the Egyptian industry by virtue of its leading position, is part of a more general assessment of the problems suffered by other branches of culture, the root of which seems to be a doubt about the value of culture in general.
According to Farid, the problems of culture in the Arab world are amplified in the case of cinema due to its commercial and industrial aspects, which have distorted and even destroyed the artistic pretensions of film. He thus refers to film producers and distributors as 'merchants' engaged in a merely commercial pursuit, and repeatedly holds Arab governments responsible for the regression of both the film industry and of cinematic culture by restricting their role to film censorship and taxation. Farid insists that the rights of filmmakers should be better protected and that the preservation of original negatives -- the restoration of damaged ones being unfeasible for the present -- should be the responsibility of governments, since producers are too short-sighted to care for their films after they have been removed from cinemas. The necessity of establishing national film archives and cinemathèques, which Farid has reiterated in several of his writings, is once again emphasised here.
Another chronic problem from which Arab film culture suffers is the Arab filmgoer's ignorance of other Arab countries' cinema. According to Farid, a difference in dialect is often used by distributors from both the public and private sectors as a pretext not to expose the public to Arabic films made in neighbouring countries. While Egyptian commercial cinema has maintained its pan-Arab popularity over the past three quarters of a century, this has been at the expense of alternative Egyptian cinema and of other remarkable Arab cinemas -- particularly the Algerian, Tunisian, Lebanese and Syrian. This fact has in turn created animosity between filmmakers and cinéastes from these countries on the one side and from Egypt on the other, which has done great disservice to all concerned. Farid argues that distributors across the Arab world have exploited this dissidence in order to sustain the monopoly of Egyptian commercial films in cinemas and on television in all the Arab countries.
As an attempt to overcome these divisions, Farid cites the 1975 effort of Dr. Abdel-Raziq Hassan, president of the Arab Organisation for Economic Unity, to establish an Arab Union for Cinema Industry. This attempt however failed, and for its failure Farid blames "the Arab cinema merchants (dealers) both inside and outside Egypt [for] forming an unprecedented united front in opposition to this attempt, which would have revealed and exposed their haphazard and chaotic practices. Their belief that only these habitual practices bring them profits, which would be diminished by any change in them, is not only misguided but is also contrary to truth. The mere experiment of changing the status quo would be a tremendous disaster in their limited view."
After giving an account of writings concerning Arab cinema from both inside and outside the Arab world, and dedicating a chapter to international Arab film festivals, Farid goes on to illustrate the contemporary situation of the film industry and of film culture in specific Arab countries. Chapters nine to 20 therefore concern aspects of Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Sudanese, Libyan and Gulf cinemas. Each chapter outlines very briefly the role of filmmakers, especially the pioneers, and critics in these countries in establishing a film culture, and provides information about their respective cinemas. This information includes, for example, the percentage of Egyptian films to the total number of films released, the total number of cinemas and of films made, and it shows that in many Arab countries the film industry is today almost non-existent. In general, apart from a weakening Lebanese and Syrian film industry, there has been a steady devaluation of cinema by both Arab governments and public.
"There are various parties involved in the film production field, some have financial resources, some have facilities, and some have manpower. However, there is no co-ordination between these parties, and there is no organisation for cinéastes and filmmakers," says a Sudanese publication quoted by Farid. This testimony seems to be applicable to all the Arab countries.
Farid's book contains detailed documentation concerning the Arab cinema: its filmmakers, criticism, distribution, screening and reception conditions. This is a historiographic approach to the subject, as opposed to a critical one, which would have tackled specific films or works by a specific filmmaker, or a theoretical one, which would have sought to establish a particular hypothesis concerning the specificity of a given feature or aspect of the medium for the communication of a given idea. The value of Farid's work, therefore, lies in the accuracy with which the names of film personalities, publications, movements and events are recorded in addition to the given figures and dates. However unfortunately, some of the latter would have benefited from further clarification. For example, merely mentioning that in Oman 100 films are shown every year -- 70% Indian, 15% Egyptian, 14% American and 1% Pakistani-- is not in itself useful unless this information is accompanied by an indication of the period these figures refer to. How are we to account, for example, for the years when the number of Egyptian films produced -- sometimes no more than four -- was much less than 15? Similarly, to state that two million cinema tickets are sold in Bahrain according to a 1983 statistic is not indicative of the current situation, since the subsequent abundance of video, Laser Vision, DVD and movie-channels, not to speak of the increase in the population, must have changed this figure tremendously.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the fact that the Arab Maghreb's cinema is inexplicably excluded from consideration, Al-Cinema Al-Arabiya Al-Mo'assira is a valuable contribution to the Egyptian cinema library, which otherwise shares the aridity that Farid aptly diagnoses in his remarks on the culture of cinema in the Arab world.
Reviewed by Mohamed El-Assyouti
