Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 26 July - 1 August 2001 Issue No.544
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Hosni's many deaths

WEEKS after the death of Soad Hosni in London the Arab media is still engaging in its own conjecturing. Is it a case of murder, or did the actress really kill herself? And if so, does this mean that she lost her faith before she died (in which case she was not properly entitled to funerary prayers)?
In various attempts to answer these questions, journalists have been seeking out what information they can lay their hands on, with little attention, it seems, to the accuracy and appropriateness of the data they present, or to the validity of their interpretations. The overwhelming majority of commentators have endeavoured to prove that Hosni was killed, a sensational theory for which the most far-fetched support has been sought.
On a more positive note, Hosni's name will be honoured in the next round of the Cairo Film Festival, the Alexandria Film Festival and the Damascus Film Festival, the Cairo Radio and Television Festival having honoured her last month. Actor Hussein Fahmi, the director of the Cairo Film Festival, told the press last week that he was considering a plan to use Hosni's image as the principal motif of the next round's promotional posters.
Screenwriter Samir Zayed completed the script of the first film depicting the events of Hosni's life -- to be shot, he hopes, in time for Hosni's Araba'in (the 40th day after death) -- while, to mark the same event, an as yet unidentified cassette company bought the rights of her song performances in films with the aim of producing a new album.

Almost in Lebanon

LAST Friday the Israeli authorities prevented the Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim -- a Druze, an Israeli citizen and, throughout the Arab world, a household name of the Palestinian resistance -- from leaving Israel on a visit to Lebanon during which he was scheduled to meet President Emil Lahoud and Walid Gonbolat, president of the Progressive Socialist Party.
The Lebanese Minister of Information Ghazi El-Aridi, who was to coordinate Al- Qasim's visit, told the press that, in a phone call Friday afternoon, the poet had said Israel's intelligence and Ministry of Defence had informed him of the decision to restrain his movement.
Al-Qasim added that the Knesset is currently discussing legislation to prevent any Arab Israeli figure from visiting any country hostile to Israel.
Analysts contend that it is Gonbolat's campaign against the conscription of Druze in the Israeli army that triggered the decision. The Israeli government is said to be concerned that Al-Qasim's brand of "resistance from within" is undermining its hegemony. In the course of his phone call to El-Aridi, Al-Qasim thanked the Lebanese president, who was to receive him personally, and sent his regards to Gonbolat.

Discipline, boys

IN A minor scandal last week, the well- known director and actor Galal El-Sharqawi was sent to the disciplinary council of the Academy of Arts following a brawl with a fellow professor at the Higher Institute for Theatrical Arts, Nabil Munib. The administrative prosecutor approved the motion to send the two colleagues to the disciplinary council after investigations revealed that, during a staff meeting at the institute, the culprits "behaved contrary to the dictates of their post and betrayed the dignity of their profession, breaking its code of ethics and publicly degrading it."
The sparring reportedly was triggered by Munib's unexpected attack on El-Sharqawi, to which the latter responded violently. By the time staff members managed to prevent El-Sharqawi from throwing a glass of water at Munib, the latter had deftly eluded the arms and legs of those voluntary peace- keepers, slapping El-Sharqawi, then kicking him.

Eight years on
THE EIGHTH anniversary of Akhbar Al- Adab, the popular literary-cultural weekly, spawned an eight-page review of "the questions of Egyptian culture" in the last issue on Sunday. Presented in news format, the articles in question tackled a range of topics from the Ministry of Culture censorship crises that started last year with the publication of Syrian novelist Haydar Haydar's A Banquet for Seaweed, to seminar culture in Cairo.
The tone was predominantly oppositional, in character with Akhbar Al-Adab's status as the mouthpiece of " progressive intellectuals." As writer Mahmoud El- Wardani pointed out, in the last eight years Akhbar Al-Adab has played a vital role in speaking out for freedom of expression, whether creative or intellectual, displaying a remarkably liberal orientation compared to similar publications.
Topics subsumed under "the questions" of the headline included an assessment of Francophone culture in the Arab world; a critique of the state awards; and a narrative of the ineffectual Egyptian Writers' Union and its transformations through the years.
Akhbar Al-Adab celebrated the beginning of its ninth year with the publication, in its regular supplement "Al-Bustan," of the opening chapters of the first edition of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to be translated from the original directly into Arabic.

Viennese tunes
LAST month a number of Arab filmmakers participated in the Francophone Film Festival in Vienna: Salma Bakkar and Moufida Al-Tlatli from Tunis; Farid Belyazid, Jilali Farahati and Nabil Ayyoush from Morocco; and Ghassan Salhab from Lebanon.
Of the two Egyptian contributions -- Atef Hatata's Al-Abwab Al-Mughlaqa (Closed Doors) and the veteran actor Nour El- Sherif's directorial debut, Al-Ashiqan (The Two Lovers) -- the latter received the warmer welcome, appealing to both Arab and Austrian viewers.
"Those who believe that globalisation as it is currently understood and practiced will solve the problems of the world," El-Sherif said, relating his two lovers' more negative impulses to the new world order, "tend to forget that civilisations with a long artistic history will never abandon their heritage simply to replicate the products of American culture."
Compiled by Youssef Rakha

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