Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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A different dynamic

By Tarek Atia

The following conversation was overheard in a barbershop in Heliopolis. "Are you going to any of the films in this year's Cairo International Film Festival?"

"Story or scenes?"

There was laughter all around. The reason why, of course, was the festival's long-standing reputation as a venue for the screening of un-cut films from around the world for an audience primarily composed of horny young men.

But things may be a little bit different this year. For one thing, the festival will only be taking place in 10 cinemas around town rather than the regular 30. A staffer at the Festival's administrative office explained the change: "It will allow us to be better organised regarding getting the films to the right cinemas at the right time, and it will also lessen the confusion about what's showing where. We have also chosen those cinemas that are of the highest quality, with the best screens and seating, and high sound quality, with Dolby, etc. The tickets at these cinemas are also generally in the LE20-25 range, which means that the receipts from just these 10 cinemas will more than make up for the receipts from the 30 or so cinemas that we used to show the films in for LE7 and 10."

The logic of this is somewhat confusing. For one thing, it should have a positive effect on the organisation, considering how frequently one would go to a cinema in previous years and find that either the schedule had been haphazardly changed because a copy of the scheduled film was not available, or that the scheduled film was still on its way to the cinema from its previous venue, delayed, perhaps, because of heavy traffic.

On the other hand, doesn't limiting the number of cinemas, and making sure that the films are only shown in more expensive venues, go against the grain of the whole concept of the festival itself? Isn't the festival meant to offer the general public the chance to catch up on the latest and best that the world has to offer?

If anything, the decision will test the festival's tendency to become a mere excuse for people to catch R-rated or risqué films. In other words, will it still be worth it for people to spend even more to see a little naked thigh?

But this year's festival will also be testing several other things as well. Coming smack in the midst of a heated political climate, with various people and organisations, including the Union of Egyptian Actors, calling for a boycott of American films, one wonders whether or not such calls will have an effect on audience enthusiasm for the festival's American offerings.

In the weeks preceding the festival, American films showing in Egyptian cinemas were still as popular as ever, which probably means the calls for a boycott are not really being heeded, as they are, to a larger extent, regarding other American products.

Ahmed Shibini, who works in IT sales, sums it up as follows: "I might boycott American soft drinks because not drinking them won't kill me. But boycotting American films is a bad idea since only through their films and media will people be able to figure out how and what the Americans are thinking."

Ahmed Fahim, an engineer, has always been a big fan of American films, but he felt so strongly about the situation that he has actually been participating in the boycott. Fahim says he knows that he is "not ruining the American economy with my boycott, but at least it's something." Fahim thinks we should compete with American products in every industry, even cinema, because, "at this stage, we have the know how."

Regarding the film festival, which he has always followed closely, Fahim says he "probably won't be attending the American films."

Shibini, on the other hand, falls into the camp of people who usually ignore the festival, with the excuse that it only shows "unknown Taiwanese films that I'm not really interested in."

Various factions of the entertainment press, meanwhile, have wondered why the film festival itself did not take a stand against American cinema by not including American films either in the official competition or among the films being screened. Responding to his critics, festival head Hussein Fahmi said that he would only do so if boycotting American films was an official state policy.

One columnist in opposition daily Al-Wafd actually went so far as to argue that the festival was actually boycotting Arabic films, since only one Egyptian film and one Moroccan film are in the official competition.

But calls to promote Arabic cinema should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, considering an incident which occurred last Wednesday night on Egyptian TV, which clearly shows how little attention is really being paid to the history of Egyptian cinema itself. Channel 1 was set to screen the landmark '80s film, Al-Hobb Fowq Hadabat Al-Haram (Love on Pyramids Plateau), directed by the late Atef El-Tayeb. All the major papers had written in their daily TV schedules that the film was directed by Atef Salem, and even the presenters on TV announced that the film was directed by Atef Salem.

Such mistakes do happen sometimes, but it was still shocking that all the newspapers printed the schedule without even bothering to check if the director's name was correct. The fact that the schedule must have passed through the many levels of bureaucracy at the TV Union before actually being announced by the presenter without a single person catching the mistake also shows that perhaps we should be a bit more conscientious about our own industry before calling for the boycott of others.

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Related stories:
Princes and knights
Romantic interlude 2 - 8 November 2000
Festive tango 26 November-2 December 1998
See Cairo Film Festival Programme

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