23 - 29 August 2001
Issue No.548
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 23 - 29 August 2001 Issue No.548 |
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The legend lives on
ON SATURDAY the singing Lebanese icon Sabah (Janette Faghali), guest of honour at the Seventh Cairo International Song Festival (20-28 August), addressed a host of journalists and public figures at Le Meridien Heliopolis Hotel, where she stayed with her husband Fadi Lubnan during her brief visit to Cairo on the occasion of the opening of the festival. Present at the conference were the festival director ambassador Salah Selim, the composer and television figure Helmi Bakr (one of Sabah's collaborators and now her articulate spokesman) and hotel staff. "Sabah is undoubtedly a legend," Bakr asserted, "a legend that enriched Arab cultural life."
Sabah's grand entry in a glittering silver suit surrounded by Bakr and Selim was not much delayed; and she immediately broke the ice by leaning over towards her small audience, smiling and uttering a casual greeting. For close on an hour Sabah fielded difficult questions with snippets of old songs, witty remarks and humorous anecdotes. The inevitable signs of age notwithstanding, she was undeniably the most amusing person in the room; her modesty and willingness to accommodate her fans were indeed remarkable. Yet the ease with which she discussed the years of her glory in Egypt (where she made her name), her massive repertoire of songs and films and even her 16-year-old marriage revealed a remarkable degree of self- confidence. "I feel sorry for those of my colleagues who died," she said, answering a question about how she feels when she sees herself as a young woman in her films. "I don't feel sorry for myself," she added, chuckling. "Even if they say I'm old and haggard, I still exist and my audience still loves me."
The false Sadat
ACTOR Ahmed Zaki, the star of Mohamed Khan's Ayyam Al-Sadat (Days of Sadat), a widely publicised film he co-produced with the Radio and Television Union, called on the ministries of information, culture and the interior last week to protect a major cinematic event against piracy. "They stole my film," he pleaded, "and ripped me off. After my disappointment in the film theatres that conspired against the film... I was deeply distressed to find out it has been stolen." Zaki had discovered pirated video cassettes of the film, whereupon he contacted the head censor Madkour Thabet, who in turn alerted the police. Many copies were subsequently unearthed by police, notably in Heliopolis and the Mediterranean resort of Marina. One man was arrested with 27 copies of the film in his possession. Another man was caught offering the videos for sale at LE15, an outrageously low price. In the course of the investigation, the videos were identified as copies of the television version of the film, not the original; further analysis confirmed that they were made from a television tape that must have leaked out of the Union building. Thabet denied knowledge of the exact number of pirated copies in circulation, stressing that investigations are underway at the Union to find out who is responsible for dispensing with the tape from which the copies were made.First books
FOLLOWING the Seventh Rabat Festival (a many-sided event the literary programme of which provided for a discussion of "the crisis of Arab criticism and the historical novel," according to Mahmoud Al-Wardani in Akhbar Al-Adab), a recent publishing initiative by the Moroccan Ministry of Culture, Al- Kitab Al-Awal (The First Book), made prominent news in the Arab press last week. Targeting the young and the unacknowledged in Moroccan literary life, the programme publishes literary debuts, giving voice to those short story writers and poets whose work is scattered among magazines and cultural supplements. One such debut, for example, was Oyoub Al-Batal (The Hero's Flaws) by Mohamed Jubran, a writer whose career commenced in the 1970s.The series' latest publications were Firsan Al-Khoyoul Al-Mayyita (The Knights of Dead Steeds) by Mohamed Al-Murabiti, Shubuhat Saghira (Small Suspicions) by Mohamed Al- Zalmati -- two short story collections -- and Al-Daynasaurat Tashtam Steven Spielberg (The Dinosaurs Smell Out Steven Spielberg), a collection of poems by Jamal Budoma. All three writers belong to the experimental and taboo-breaking generation of the 1990s. Against Al-Murabiti's simplistic fantasies, Al-Zalmati advances a series of literary fragments, insinuating plots he never follows through; while Budoma comments obliquely on the postmodern predicament.
Worldwide participation
LAST week the director of the National Centre for Cinema, Mohamed El-Qalyoubi, announced the participation of a number of Egyptian films in two international festivals this summer: the 13th Ankara International Film Festival in Turkey (starting end of November), and the six-day Festival du Cinéma International en Abitibi-Témiscamingue in Canada (starting the last Saturday in October). Participating in Abitibi- Témiscamingue, El-Qalyoubi went on to say, are: Ard Al-Khawf (Land of Fear), Dawoud Abdel-Sayed's latest feature; Hassan wa Aziza (Hassan and Aziza) by Karim Gamaleddin; and Alamat Ibril (April Signs), a short film by Ahmed Maher. To be screened in the Turkish capital, on the other hand, are Mohamed Shaaban's Al-Sharaf (Honour), the late Sameh El-Bagouri's Korsi fil Kolob (Party Pandemonium), Mohamed Abu-Seif's Oula Thanawi (First Secondary) and Ahmed Abu-Zeid's recent documentary Filistin '52: Sanat Al-Ihtilal (Palestine '52: The Year of the Invasion). Many commented that the increasing presence of Egyptian films on international screens, besides raising the profile of the industry abroad, suggests that the "crisis of production" which strangulated Egyptian cinema in the last two decades may be giving way at last.
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