Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		22 - 28 August 2002 Issue No. 600 Culture	Current issue Previous issue Site map
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Badawi remembered
TO COMMEMORATE Abdel-Rahman Badawi, who died on 25 July, the Zayed Centre of Coordination held a seminar entitled "Abdel-Rahman Badawi: Pioneer of Philosophy and Enlightenment" at its headquarters in Abu Dhabi last week, reports Mustafa El-Minshawi. Two major participants were Murad Wahba, Ain Shams University professor of philosophy; and Abdel-Mutie Suwidi, an Emirates higher education official. While Wahba discussed the attempt of this "puzzled philosopher" to establish a philosophical culture in the modern Arab world, Suwidi announced the Centre's decision to institute an annual award in Badawi's name, to be given to the most outstanding philosophical research project submitted.
Brazen ways with song
A DEBATE raged at the People's Assembly (PA) last week concerning the increasingly controversial comic hit Al- Limby, starring Mohamed Saad. The film, MP Zakareya Azmi pointed out in an interpelation directed at Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, incorporates a purposefully sarcastic rendition of one of Umm Kulthoum's best loved songs, Hobb Eih (What Love). Azmi contended that Saad's version of this classic, which forms part of the soundtrack cassette -- now available on the market -- disfigures and demeans a significant portion of Egypt's cultural heritage. How could the censor pass both film and cassette, Azmi inquired of Hosni in an address to PA chairman Fathi Surour, when respectfully preserving artistic heritage, however recent, is supposed to be one of the Ministry's priorities?
Summer cinema
THE EXECUTIVE Committee of the Alexandria Film Festival -- the 24th round opens on 18 September -- met last Tuesday to finalise plans. Mamdouh El-Leithi, chairman of the Association of Film Writers and Critics, which organises the festival, announced that 53 films representing 31 countries will be screened. The programme includes special sections for Arab film abroad and Iraqi cinema, each comprising five screenings. The festival will open with either Ali Abdel-Khaleq's Yawm Al-Karama (Dignity Day) or the British film Alexandria. The opening ceremony will also feature a Cairo Opera House performance directed by Badr El-Zagazigi.
One of those honoured at the opening is actor Omar Sharif, who has apologised for being unable to attend. He is currently in the US filming.
Jordanian web
THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL Association of Jordanian Writers Web site, to be launched shortly, is the latest in a series of Internet-oriented Arab literary endeavours. The site provides information on Association members, including pictures and bibliographies, as well as a brief history of the constitution and activities of the Association since it was founded in 1974. Association chairman Jamal Nagui explained that the present site is the first stage of an ongoing project to publish on the Web texts written by Association members in both Arabic and English translation.
Nagui is to visit Cairo in October to discuss future collaboration with the Egyptian Writers' Union. His principal concern is that, while it is the Association that legitimately represents the vast majority of Jordanian writers, in signing a contract with the government-administered Jordanian Writers' Union last year, the Egyptian Writers' Union failed to recognise the Association's status. Nagui is intent on explaining that it is the Association, not the Union, that retains membership in the umbrella organisation of the Arab Writers' Union; and that, despite tensions with the government, it is to the former, not the latter, that Jordanian writers' by and large choose to belong.
Salem, again
THE EGYPTIAN Writers' Union this week decided to question playwright Ali Salem, the literary world's notorious symbol of normalisation with Israel, expelled from the Union for his normalising activities and recently readmitted by order of a court verdict pronounced on 24 May last year.
The interrogative committee to question Salem is made up of Mohamed El-Sayed Eid, deputy chairman of the Union, Mohamed Lotfi, the Supreme Council for Culture's general legal adviser and writer Abdel-Aal El-Hamamsi, the Union's secretary-general. The reason the courts allowed Salem to retain membership in the Union, Eid explained, was that the decision to expel him had not been preceded by a proper interrogation. This, he explained, is what the Union aims to undertake now, in the hope of being able to legally expel Salem. The legal battle, Eid added, rages on; with lawyers Ragaai Atia and Yusri El- Azab working to repeal the verdict.
Following the Union's decision to interrogate him Salem refused to submit to questioning, declaring the decision irrational and ridiculous and stressing the fact that, in reopening the file, Union officials were in effect defying the law; "and taking off the gown of the author," in Salem's own words, "have once again decided to sport that of the witch-hunter." Rather than letting the Union exercise such control, Salem independently resigned.
By Youssef Rakha

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