Last week Café Riche saw the first meeting of the new Friends of Yehia Haqqi Society, an as yet informal gathering of writers and artists devoted to the literary icon's work. Founding members include novelist Bahaa Taher, director Mahmoud El-Heddini and Noha Haqqi, the writer's daughter and honourary president of the society. Among the writers who have since expressed an interest in becoming part of the society are veteran experimentalist Edwar El-Kharrat and television dramatist Osama Anwar Okasha.
This was the first such meeting of intellectual luminaries at the Café Riche since writers Ibrahim Mansour and Radwa Ashour called for the founding of an independent tagamu (rally) of intellectuals prior to the Haydar Haydar controversy last year. Yet the quiet, orderly way in which the participants discussed their largely apolitical objectives contrasted sharply and perhaps favourably with the politically charged, verbally chaotic atmosphere of the latter event.
Haqqi (1905-1992), a diplomat of Turkish descent, is remembered no less for his intimate explorations of Egyptian society than for his pioneering role in defining modern Arabic literature. A meticulous observer of urban and rural life, he was equally a linguist and a stylist. The founding members believe that Haqqi's literary project, as classically oriented as it is modern, comprises a matchless model for many generations yet to come. The society aims to promote this model through various activities: publishing editions and translations of Haqqi's books, creating a Yehia Haqqi Internet site, conducting seminars and workshops, and founding an annual award bearing his name.
Description de l'Egypt
From 3pm Saturday to 3pm Sunday 28-9 April, the French satellite channel TV5, in collaboration with the Radio and Television Union, offered an extended live broadcast from Cairo. The broadcast is part of an ongoing series that has included Dakar, Hanoi and Rio de Janeiro and has a target audience of 600 million viewers.
According to TV5 director Jean Stock, speaking at a press conference held prior to the event in Cairo, the programme aims to convey an immediate sense of life in a number of major cities around the globe. Among other, heterogeneous locations, the Cairo episode captured the sights and sounds of bustling thoroughfares, sidewalk cafes and tourist sites.
The broadcast began at the Citadel, where an interview with historian Ayman Fouad illuminated the regional status of Fatimid Cairo and the importance of the area through the ages. In another interview Le Monde journalist Robert Sole, author of several books on Egypt, described ancient Egyptian conceptions of the Nile while sailing in a felucca. The live broadcast was interspersed with documentaries and archival material, including a recent, hour-long interview with Mrs Suzane Mubarak. Documentaries took the viewer beyond the Giza Plateau to a range of locales from Sinai to Luxor and Alexandria.
In an effort to debunk preconceptions about Egypt, as Stock would have it, interviewers asked everyday Egyptian citizens economic and social questions, shedding unmediated light on present-day life in Egypt from different standpoints.
It was the broadcast's intimate concern with Coptic, Islamic and ancient Egypt that stood out the most, however, with Egyptian historians and scholars making informative live contributions. The material with which the broadcast was interspersed comprises the work of French and Egyptian film-makers and television journalists: a positive display of intercultural compatibility.
See no evil?
Last month the script of comedy megastar Adel Imam's upcoming film, Amir Al-Zalam (The Prince of Darkness), survived the censor's office almost unscathed. Most of the changes required for approval concerned the identity of minor characters: "the president of the republic," for example, is to become "an important official." A number of raucous scenes, besides, were deemed too crude for "public taste," as the censor put it.
Imam plays an October War veteran, Said El-Masri (the name means literally "Happy the Egyptian") who was blinded not by enemy artillery but by slipping on a banana skin at the end of one battle. Many years later, following a series of poignantly funny adventures, he unwittingly becomes a national hero when he manages to preempt an attempt on the president's life. But his latter triumph proves as ludicrous as his former demise.
Written by Ibrahim El-Beltagui and Khaled Sarhan, Amir Al-Zalam is to be produced by Tamer Abdel-Moneim and directed by Rami Imam, the veteran actor's son. Imam's choice to work with such a young team is thought to reflect his concern about keeping up with new-generation comedians like Mohamed Heneidi and Alaa Walieddin, whose box-office hits (Saidi fil Gamaa Al-Amrikiya, Abboud ala Al-Hudoud etc.) have proved more successful than Imam's last three features, of which Al-Wad Mahrous Betaa El-Wazir (Mahrous, the Minister's Boy) drew the largest audience. Imam expects the film to be ready for release in time for the summer season, when it will compete with these young stars' latest features.
Last week Café Riche saw the first meeting of the new Friends of Yehia Haqqi Society, an as yet informal gathering of writers and artists devoted to the literary icon's work. Founding members include novelist Bahaa Taher, director Mahmoud El-Heddini and Noha Haqqi, the writer's daughter and honourary president of the society. Among the writers who have since expressed an interest in becoming part of the society are veteran experimentalist Edwar El-Kharrat and television dramatist Osama Anwar Okasha.
This was the first such meeting of intellectual luminaries at the Café Riche since writers Ibrahim Mansour and Radwa Ashour called for the founding of an independent tagamu (rally) of intellectuals prior to the Haydar Haydar controversy last year. Yet the quiet, orderly way in which the participants discussed their largely apolitical objectives contrasted sharply and perhaps favourably with the politically charged, verbally chaotic atmosphere of the latter event.
Haqqi (1905-1992), a diplomat of Turkish descent, is remembered no less for his intimate explorations of Egyptian society than for his pioneering role in defining modern Arabic literature. A meticulous observer of urban and rural life, he was equally a linguist and a stylist. The founding members believe that Haqqi's literary project, as classically oriented as it is modern, comprises a matchless model for many generations yet to come. The society aims to promote this model through various activities: publishing editions and translations of Haqqi's books, creating a Yehia Haqqi Internet site, conducting seminars and workshops, and founding an annual award bearing his name.
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