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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Above and beyond
By Khairiya El-BishlawiDid the opening ceremony of the 24th Cairo International Film Festival induce in many members of the audience the same feeling of awe? One scene in particular seemed loaded with meaning: a procession of romantic couples, icons of classic Egyptian cinema, winding their way up to the stage to be honoured -- no longer as fresh, perhaps, but every bit as glamorous, the men haughtily suave, the women dignified in their attempts to conceal the relentless marching of age. Each of these actors and actresses left an indelible mark on the Egyptian psyche, their fairy tale-like roles penetrating into the fabric of life. In the 1950s and 1960s, the heyday of romantic film, they were the stars.
And it is to the 1950s and 1960s that the festival hankers back, however radically different present-day variations on the romantic theme might be. On almost every occasion outside the film theatre, festival events have been characterised by a surprisingly consistent focus on the age of romance: on stories of love and loss, on the social and political circumstances surrounding such stories and on the contribution of Egyptian and world icons of the genre. In this sense it is interesting to note that, with respect to one's overall impression of the festival, the intellectual substance of the films on offer often supersedes the romantic imperative, providing a wide variety of essentially romantic films.
One might conjecture that it goes beyond coincidence, the fact that the opening film, too, was set in the 1960s, albeit in an altogether different place. In Dancer in the Dark, a Danish production set in Washington DC, the heroine is a Czech immigrant, a single mother with a hereditary condition causing the gradual onset of blindness. Struggling with her blue-collar job, she is trying to save enough money for an operation that could spare her son the same fate. Meanwhile she escapes the brutal realities of her life to a world of fantasy all her own, filled with the laughter, songs and dancing of old-time musicals. While reality and fantasy are sharply contrasted, the overall impression is ultimately blurred. Yet the emotive energy and psychological identification one usually associates with romance still do their heart-warming work.
This seemingly simple story, winner of the Cannes's Palme D'Or this year, comes from Dane Lars Von Trier, whose Breaking the Waves (1996) had also won a Cannes award. Hailed as the most accomplished filmmaker in Europe, Von Trier caused a sensation in the film world when he directed The Idiots (1998) according to the radically anti-conventional Dogma 95 manifesto. This technical revolution in Danish and world cinema with its trademark techniques of unsteady camera movement and irregular frames -- presenting the viewer with an eerily life-like impression of space and time -- is represented elsewhere in the festival by the Danish film Mifune. Regarding the more tricky aspects of depicting romance, the movement manages to subvert what might otherwise be perceived as excessive sentimentality, emphasising the harshness of life even as it operates within a pre-set romantic framework. But Dogma 95 is not the only trend being showcased.
Daughters of Luck (Poland)
Unlike this complex movement, Iranian cinema, which has witnessed significant changes in the 1990s, represents a more intense romantic strain using simpler techniques. This year's round of the festival happily devotes a significant part of the programme to Abbas Kiarostami, perhaps the best-known Iranian filmmaker. Despite continual surges of success, Iranian cinema has not been popular with Egyptian viewers, though. In spite of a shared cultural heritage and a similar social predicament, it has neither the superficial fascination of big Hollywood productions nor the direct commercial appeal of Egyptian box-office hits. It is for precisely those reasons that films like Tahmineh Milani's Two Women has caught the attention of critics. Effectively straightforward, the film tells the stories of two women, their separation, reunion and experience of contemporary life.
While the critics' judgment is considerate, the audience remains bound by a limited set of (predominantly non-artistic) conditions. For one thing, the festival has not shed its deplorable pornographic dimension: little, lurid pamphlets circulate among audiences, advertising the "scenes" (set up against "story" in popular analyses of festival fare) that have been endlessly discussed for 24 years. One need only point out that an intellectual and cultural revolution are needed before the average Egyptian viewer can begin to appreciate serious cinema and see explicit sex for what it is.
In this respect, a film like the Hungarian Marta Meszaros's Daughters of Luck (a Russo-Polish production) has been successful for the wrong reasons. While being a serious attempt to represent the social and political crises facing contemporary East European society, the one thing that was appreciated in Daughters of Luck is the filmmaker's propensity for explicit sex, perhaps a reflection of post-communist frustration. The protagonist, a teacher, is the wife of a Russian army engineer and the mother of two daughters who, in response to the economic crisis, seeks out business opportunities in Poland, only to wind up as a prostitute and eventually lose her daughter to an older man. And in the same vein, Greek filmmaker Nikos Panayotopoulos's Edge of Night probes the byways of Greek society, tackling a range of themes from prostitution to illegal immigrants. But it was the explicit scenes of its two young protagonists' love-making that made the film a popular success.
The audience's fascination with uncensored sex aside, alas, there are few if any truly extraordinary encounters in the festival this year. Instead, intellectual interpolations of themes of (urban) alienation and discontent abound, creating an unusual sense of intercultural identification. Be it the romantic orientation the 24th round espouses or the diverse ways in which the stuff of contemporary life is depicted by the films -- the festival's curatorial policy suggests -- turn-of-the-millennium human beings are the same everywhere: they suffer the same pains, experience the same desire to escape and fall in the same traps. Economic deprivation, personal tensions and the indifference of the powers that be combine to produce frustrated and confused players in the life game.
Such is French filmmaker Roch Stéphanik's debut -- Stand-by. Although in many ways very ordinary, it too deals with themes of escapism and psychological suffering, the frustrations of unfulfilled human lives. The protagonists, Gerard and Helen, are Antonioni-like characters, in that they seem to embody a more recent incarnation of post-industrial European angst. They feel alone in the world, severed from the family-oriented springs of warmth and security. Aside from being an accomplished take on the modern European individual's existential predicament, however, the film offers little in the way of intellectual stimulation or artistic excellence. Yet to all intents and purposes it can be said to constitute a refreshing and ultimately cheering contribution.
What Stand-by shares with the bulk of Europe's contribution is the drive to compete against Hollywood. Gianfranco Mingozzi's Tobia al Caffé, for example, is above and beyond recent displays of technical prowess. It is a conventional love story that, without innovative mechanisms, conveys its message about the perilous wiles of male-female relationships in the modern world. Sandro Cacca's Winds of Passion, by contrast, displays contemporary Italian cinema's capacity for innovative and powerful special effects and eye-catching topics, and its ability to effectively orchestrate all the trappings of modern commercial cinema. In this sense the latter contribution competes with Hollywood on its own ground, and it is a happy thought that there exist films (like the former) that seek to compete in other ways, favouring simplicity and directness.
From the Netherlands there is Frouke Fokkema's The Detour, the story of one woman's struggle with isolation and solitude after being deserted by her lover. Here, as elsewhere in the festival programme, a woman filmmaker reveals herself to be primarily interested in the female predicament. A feminist orientation perhaps helps, but it is in no way imposed on the films' content. Rather, women directors reflect their own concerns and the struggles of their own lives in their approach to the stories they tell. And these stories turn out to be remarkably similar to the more general dramatic framework within which these contemporary romances operate: isolation, dispossession, urban unrest.
Aside from Fiasco, a remarkable exercise in characterisation from Iceland, European highlights also share an interest in national-identity building. Polish filmmaker Jerzy Wojcik's The Gateway of Europe is a period drama that tackles World War I, cinematically demonstrating how geographical location has had a unrelenting impact on Polish history. To be Polish is to be occupied, Wojcik seems to imply -- all because of where your country lies on the map. The increasing proliferation of intra-European co-productions, too, is evidence of the attempt to find more outlets for European films in the face of Hollywood's hegemony. The paucity of American cinema in the present event is also to be noted: Hollywood's only contribution worth mentioning is Scott Eliot's debut, A Map of the World, another attempt at self location.
The festival still suffers a number of different problems. Official competition screenings are not always better than their fringe counterparts. Film theatres fail to abide by the official schedule and instead fulfill the audience's (meagre) expectations. Thus the festival's most significant problem is still to do with audience responses -- and the lack of any driving force, on the part of film theatre administrators, except profitability. Such is the profoundly unromantic backdrop against which the romantically-oriented event emerges this year.
Related stories:
Princes and knights 9 -15 November 2000
A different dynamic 9 -15 November 2000
See Cairo Film Festival Programme
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