Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 April - 1 May 2002 Issue No.583
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Joyce's Monk
TAHA MAHMOUD Taha died last Tuesday, at the age of 73, at the Matareya Hospital. He had recently completed a translation of Finnegan's Wake, generally thought to be the most difficult of James Joyce's novels. Taha is perhaps best- known for his translation of Ulysses.

Enlightenment again
ON SATURDAY, Sunday and Monday the Supreme Council for Culture held a seminar on "Rifa'a El-Tahtawi, Pioneer of Enlightenment," reports Mustafa El- Minshawi. The event, inaugurated by critic Gaber Asfour, head of the Supreme Council for Culture, to mark the bicentennial of El-Tahtawi's (1801-1873) birth, attracted 58 Arab and foreign participants.
Egyptian participants included scholar Salah Fadl, critic Mahmoud Amin El- Alim and poet Ahmed Abdel-Moeti Hegazi.
El-Alim chaired the seminar on Egyptian intellectuals in and after the Mohamed Ali era, historian Yunan Labib Rizq chaired one on the project of enlightenment in Egypt and writer Kamel Zohieri one on the present. The Council further intends the republication of El- Tahtawi's Al-Murshid Al-Amin fi Ta'lim Al-Banat wal Banin (The Honest Guide to Educating Girls and Boys).

Postponed festivities
THE CEREMONY marking the inauguration of Amman as the capital of Arab culture in 2002, due to take place on 18 April, has been postponed indefinitely in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The committee responsible for the event issued a statement declaring that the "commissions, official institutions, NGOs, cultural and academic departments [participating] assert unconditional support for the struggling Palestinian people, who are defending the dignity of the nation... and postpones the official inauguration and implementation of the programme, which is characterised by festivity... "

Egyptians in Yemen
ON MONDAY artist Mohamed Rizq will travel to Sanaa to act as commissar of the Exhibition of Contemporary Egyptian Art, a collaboration between the Plastic Arts Department and the Department of International Cultural Relations at the Ministry of Culture coordinated by Hamdi Abdallah, cultural attaché in Sanaa.
The exhibition includes works by Omar El-Nagdi, Mustafa Abdel-Fattah, Omar El-Fayoumi, Ali Ashour, Mohamed Rizq, Sahar El-Amir, Jihan Soliman, Hamdi Abdallah, Ismail Abdallah, Sanaa Moussa and Mohamed Abdella.

Comedy's true face
LAST WEEK Maged El-Kassar, son of the late comedian Ali El-Kassar, donated several documents to the National Council for Theatre.
The documents illuminate previously undiscovered aspects of El-Kassar's life and work, Osama Abu-Taleb, head of the Council, announced. He added that, together with other contents of the council's archives, El-Kassar's documents would form the basis of a museum of Egyptian theatre, to be part of the Library of Alexandria.

Positive encounter
REPRESENTATIVES of marketing and advertising establishments in the Arab World and beyond toured the Media Production City accompanied by Abdel- Rahman Hafez and Sami Badawi, the CEO and director of the city respectively. They discussed future collaboration in the fields of cinema, television and video.

Unexpected duet
A SEMINAR on popular Arab music coordinated last Wednesday by television anchor Salma El-Shammaa saw singers Hakim, Ihab Tawfik, Khaled Aggag, composers Hamid El-Shaa'eri and Hassan Abul-Su'oud discussing aspects of the ughniya shababiya (youth song).
Hakim announced that he was finalising a duet with Franco-Algerian rai singer Cheb Khaled, who last year collaborated with Amr Diab.
Egyptians in Vienna
THE EGYPTIAN Ambassador to Austria Sameh Shukri inaugurated the Egyptian Film Festival in Vienna last Thursday in the presence of Arab ambassadors and diplomats. The festival, a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and the National Council for Cinema, will open with Fakhreddin Nagida's Harmonika, Helmi Omran, the Egyptian cultural attache in Vienna, announced.

Dramatising violence
A WORKSHOP entitled "Social and criminal dimensions of violence in Egyptian society" opened the fourth annual conference of the National Council for Social and Criminal Research in Imbaba, which continues this week under the supervision of Amina El-Guindi, Minister of Social Affairs.
Proceedings will concentrate on dramatic treatments of violence in the audio- visual media, Nesrin El-Baghdadi, the workshop supervisor, announced, discussing the depiction of violence in the media and its effects on society.
Headed by Mahmoud Ouda, deputy president of Ain Shams University, participants will include media figures as well as academics, journalists and critics.

Visual protest
ARTISTS have begun work on two large scale murals protesting against Israel's treatment of Palestinians, to be placed in Tahrir Square.
Mustafa Hussien, Sabri Nashed, Ahmed Nawwar, Ibrahim Abdel-Malak and Omar El-Nagdi, among others, are already working on the first, which measures 30 square metres. The second, 100 square metres, has not progressed beyond the initial design stage.
Permission to exhibit was granted by Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, who agreed to the idea following the artists' silent demonstration before League headquarters during the conference of Arab foreign ministers.
Compiled by Youssef Rakha

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