Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 29 Nov. - 5 Dec. 2001 Issue No.562
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Television merger

MIDDLE East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and Future TV, two major Arab satellite channels, announced in Beirut earlier this week that they would merge. Future TV's CEO Nadim Al-Mulla explained to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the merger is an attempt to keep ahead of the digital revolution that in the next three years will make room for hundreds of new satellite channels. Together, the stations will control 60 per cent of the satellite advertising market.

Actress wins book prize

THE PRIX des cinq continents, an annual prize granted to non-French Francophone writers, went to Egyptian-born Lebanese actress Yasmine Khlat for her fictional debut Le Desespoir est un Péché (Despair is a sin) published last January in Paris by Editions du Seuil.
The novel narrates the story of a young hunch-backed peasant girl, Nada, who is brought by her mother to an unnamed Arab city where she is sold to an affluent family, the Nasurs. It follows the servant- girl's growth into adolescence and maturity and narrates her rape by the family's elder son, Ishhan, and finally, at the age of 40, her love affair with a friend of the family, the pianist Taymour.
Among the 13 books nominated this year was the Saudi Arabian writer Ahmed Aboudehman's La Ceinture (The Belt) published by Gallimard.
Established two years ago by the Agence internationale de la francophonie, the prize aims at encouraging emerging talents.

Ulysses in court
THE READER'S Edition of James Joyce's classic novel, Ulysses, was deemed in breach of copyright at London's High Court. Published by Macmillan in 1997, this reader-friendly version included spelling and punctuation corrections of some 8,000 words -- those misprinted by French typesetters in the first edition, in addition to some previously unpublished material. The Joyce estate argued that the new material, taken from archive manuscripts, was protected by copyright and should not have been published.
Last Thursday Mr Justice Lloyd ruled in favour of the estate and ordered that 1,000 undistributed copies of the work be handed over to the Joyce estate.
Ulysses was prosecuted for "obscenity" by the Home Office when it was originally issued in serial form in 1918 and was eventually published in Paris in 1922. It was only in 1937 that the first British edition appeared.

Honouring Al-Faisal
CELEBRATIONS are under way in various corners of the Arab world honouring poet Prince Abdallah Al-Faisal. Mohamed VI, Moroccan king, awarded the poet a medal for intellectual achievement. And in Cairo, the Dar Soad Al-Sabbah publishing house is organising a celebration on 19 and 20 December in the poet's honour. The event will include poetry readings as well as screening of Anwar Al- Qawadri's short film Rabi' Al-Dunya (The World's Spring), which documents the poet's life through the eyes of his contemporaries. The closing event, held at the Cairo Opera House, will be a performance by the Arabic Music Ensemble of several of Al-Faisal's poems, once sung by Umm Kalthoum and Abdel-Halim Hafez. These include Thawrat Al-Shakk, Min Agl Aynayk, Samraa and Ya Malika Qalbi.

Academy online
THE ACADEMY of the Arabic Language has gone online. The new Web site www.arabicacademy.org.eg features an introduction to the Academy and its departments as well as scholarly references and dictionaries. Of particular interest to surfers are searchable online lexicons of Qur'anic, scientific and technological terms. The only catch is that surfing this site requires Windows with Arabic support.

Arab culture at youth fair
THE SALON du Livre de Jeunesse, the French book fair for children and young adults, started yesterday and runs until 3 December. Since this year's round places special focus on Arabic literature, several Arab intellectuals have been invited, including Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, Ilyas Khuri and Hoda Barakat.
Mahfouz in Alexandria
THE LIBRARY of Alexandria is holding a special symposium, "Alexandria in the literature of Naguib Mahfouz", as part of the celebrations of the Nobel laureate's ninetieth birthday next month.
Participants include critics and scholars from both Cairo and Alexandria. Papers are expected to cover various analyses of "places" in the literature of Mahfouz with special reference to Alexandria. Two of Mahfouz's novels, Miramar and Autumn Quail, are set in the city.

Egypt at Nantes...
THE NANTES Film Festival, which aims to introduce the French public to films from Asia, Africa and Latin America, is honouring Egyptian actor Nur El-Sherief in its current round. Eight of El-Sherief's films will be shown: Al-Sarab (The Mirage), Zawgati wal-Kalb (My Wife and the Dog), Darbit Shams (Sunstroke), Al-Aar (The Shame), Ayam Al-Ghadab (Days of Anger), Layla Sakhina (Hot Night) and his directorial debut Al-Ashiqun (The Lovers).
Among the Arab films participating in the festival are Youssef Chahine's Sukkut Hansawar (Silence, We're Shooting) and the Moroccan filmmaker Dawoud Awlad Sayed's Husan Al-Rih. Tunisian filmmaker Khaled Ghurbal's Fatma was shown on opening night.

and at Amiens
THE AMIENS International Film Festival granted its special jury prize to Prix du pardon de Mansour Sora (France, Sénégal). Argentinean filmmaker Paula Hernandez received a prize for her film Herencia while Rafael Velasco received one for his El Sueño del Caiman de Beto Gomez. Egyptian filmmaker Atef Hetata, director of Al-Abwab Al-Moghlaqa (Closed Doors), also received a prize for his script Al-Manfa (The Exile).
Compiled by Amina Elbendary

Recommend this page

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Send a letter to the Editor