Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Arab music awards
The 10th annual Arab Music Festival and Conference ended last Saturday, reports Reham El-Adawi. Festival director Ratiba El-Hefni announced the recommendations of the symposium, which included teaching improvisation in Arab music at musical schools and institutes, organising more competitions to develop this gift and encouraging the broadcast of this genre of music on radio.
Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and director of the Cairo Opera House Samir Farag honoured pioneers in the field of music and singing including the late Laila Murad, poet Ahmed Shafiq Kamel, composer Ibrahim Ragab, Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri, Moroccan musicologist Abdel- Aziz Bin Abdel-Galil, singers Galal Harb and Sherifa Fadel, violinist Saad Mohamed Hassan and late Arabic calligrapher Abdel-Rahman Sho'eb.
Farag presented Hosni with the shield of the festival for his efforts in supporting its activities since its inception in 1992. Winners of the dor competition sang a selection of Umm Kulthoum's songs accompanied by the National Arabic Music Ensemble, conducted by Selim Sahab. The closing ceremony also featured a solo oud recital by Sayed Mansour as well as Moroccan singer Fouad Zabadi. The evening ended with a performance of old songs by vocalists Abdallah Al- Roweished from Kuwait and Ghada Ragab from Egypt.

Chief prankster dies
American novelist Ken Kesey passed away last Saturday at the age of 66 at a hospital in Oregon. Kesey is best remembered for his 1962 novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. His first novel, it tells the story of McMurphy, an inmate in a mental hospital who leads a rebellion against the repressive staff. Yet authority eventually wins and McMurphy is lobotomised. It was based on the author's own experiences at a war veterans' mental hospital in California, where, in 1959, he became a paid volunteer in experiments with mind- altering drugs, chief among which was LSD. The novel was embraced by the counterculture of the 1960s and remains a classic of American fiction.
Kesey himself became an icon of the hippie movement. In 1964 he and some friends toured the US in a psychedelic painted bus labelled "Weird Load" calling themselves the "Merry Pranksters." Most of the occupants, including Kesey (the "Chief Prankster") were high on drugs and even gave away LSD for free. Their humour and antics were meant to upset conservatives as much as to amuse others. Their exploits were immortalised in Tom Wolfe's 1968 novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was made into an Oscar-winning film starring Jack Nicholson in 1976.

New Egyptian museum
Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni is due to lay the cornerstone for the new Egyptian musuem on 7 December. Planned on an area of 117 feddans on the Cairo- Alexandria desert road, this will be the largest archaeological museum in the world. According to Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Surpeme Council for Antiquities, the new museum will house around 150,000 artefacts. These will be curated from the various Egyptian museums as well as the coffers of the Ministry of Culture.
Construction work is expected to begin earlier next year and to continue for three years. The total budget of the project is estimated at $350 million.

Egyptian film in Torino...
The 19th round of the Torino Film Festival opens today and continues until the 24th. It includes a special section entitled "Panorama of Egyptian film" featuring such classics as Al-'Azima (Determination), Al-Ard (The Land), Du'aa Al-Qarawan, Al-Liss wa Al-Kilab ( The Thief and the Dogs) and Al-Mumiaa (The Mummy). Among the Egyptian artists attending are directors Kamal El-Sheikh and Youssef Chahine, as well as actors Omar Sharif, Madiha Youssri and Isaad Younis.

and Damascus...
The 12th round of the Damascus International Film Festival, held under the theme "Cinema Rebor" announced its awards last Friday. The first prize went to the Norwegian film Aberdeen, which deals with a tense father-daughter relationship. Syrian filmmaker Abdel-Latif Abdel-Hamid's Qamarayn wa Zaytuna (Two Moons and An Olive) won the second prize. It follows the friendships of several schoolchildren torn between cynical school teachers and harsh economic realities and living conditions. Finally, the third prize was split between the Belgian film Everybody Famous, and the Italian Bread and Tulips.
Egyptian filmmaker Radwan El- Kashef's newest movie, Al-Sahir (The Magician) won the prize for best Arabic film and actor Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz won a special prize for his role in that production.
In the short films category, the Brazilian entry Red BMW won the first prize, followed by Syrian filmmaker Walid Hreib's Lahdhat Farah (Moment of Joy) and finally the French Moroccan film The Wall.
Syrian filmgoers also got their award in the form of a week-long extension of the festival during which some 230 films will be replayed.

and Tunis
The fifth round of the Soussa Festival for Children and Youth's Films closed last Saturday. The Egyptian film Wasat Al- Balad (Downtown), directed by Amir Ramsis, won the golden prize for best short feature film while Magdi Ahmed Ali's Asrar Al-Banat (Girls' Secrets) won the festival's special prize. Its scriptwriter Azza Shalbi also won a special prize. Iran won two golden prizes for children's films while the Tunisian film Hubb Muharram (Forbidden Love) won the prize for best long feature.
Compiled by Amina Elbendary

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