Issue No. 609
Culture
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24 - 30 October 2002 Issue No. 609 Culture |
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A chaste provocation
Youssef Rakha gauges the moods of a brand new round of the Cairo International Film Festival
One positive development in the 26th Cairo International Film Festival is the atmosphere of reserve permeating the event. The Cairo Festival is the one annual opportunity for viewing uncut foreign fare, and as such it had always unwittingly catered to thousands of male viewers all too enthusiastic about the sight of bare flesh on the silver screen. Press screenings were markedly different from their downtown public counterparts, during which one was likely to encounter far more disenfranchised porn fans than movie buffs. Notwithstanding the relatively highbrow and invariably exclusive interactions of festival officials, guests and journalists, the event tended to amount to a carnival of dissipation rather than a sedate, art-oriented gathering. And one side effect of this fact was the tendency of commercial movie theatres to bypass the programme altogether, screening "scene"-- rich films more frequently than they should, and often either altering the times of or wholly omitting some of the best "story"-- based fare.
Click to view captionThe Cherry Orchard (1999), Michael Cacoyannis Due as much to the increased availability of explicit eroticism accessible through private and illegally public satellite television broadcasts as to the orientation of the festival's new director, Cherif El- Shoubashi, the external aspect of the event has improved significantly. Attendance may have gone down but one has the feeling that people are there to see the movies, not to sniff out nudity. The atmosphere of commercial screens (the number of which was reduced by two thirds or more) is this year more comparable to that of Opera House venues, and audiences are thus in a position to appreciate the technical advantages of the former over the latter, whose frequent failure to project the films in the right ratio, with poor luminosity, was the subject of far too many complaints. One of El-Shoubashi's most widely anticipated promises was better organisation, and despite the inevitable logistical failures inherent to what the Anglo-Indian director-producer Ismail Merchant described as the Egyptian character (such failures are as evident in audience etiquette as they are in such occasional blunders as the substitution of Alireza Ghanie's The Wind Game for the French film Le Vent Nous Emportera at the 7pm Creative Centre screening on Saturday), the accurate scheduling of screening times and venues both is one thing El-Shoubashi has more or less firmly delivered.
With his own and press office director Ayman El-Amir's media experience, comprehensive coverage through networking was appropriately prioritised over the participation of by now lacklustre icons of past decades -- something that had characterised previous rounds. An impressive array of truly "international" guests of honour -- Irene Papas, Michael Cacoyannis, Vanessa Redgrave, Carlos Saura as well as this round's remarkably constituted jury, headed by Merchant -- gave the event a credibly cinematic edge. And curatorial policy seems to have improved in tandem: a smaller number (140 compared to over 250) of more carefully selected films showcase the full spectrum of contemporary cinema beyond Hollywood; El-Shoubashi's "Cinema of the South" received the lion's share of artistic and administrative attention, with the audience being given a chance not only to see excellent offerings from the least likely geographic origins but to interact openly with their makers, the festival's honoured guests. Eleven programmes in total ensured vitality and variety, while both representation and participation were happily more democratic. Yet in laying the foundations of a viable international cinematic event, was El-Shoubashi, in effect, revealing the present paucity of the Egyptian film scene?
Beyond the two official competition entries -- Samir Seif's Maali Al-Wazir (His Excellency the Minister) and Mohamed El-Qalyoubi's Kharif Adam (Adam's Autumn) -- the Egyptian presence was felt only in incidental contexts like the press conference following the screening of Andrew Litwack's Merci Docteur Rey (2001), a Merchant-Ivory production that features Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Birkin as well as a cameo appearance by filmmaker Yousri Nasralla. Redgrave, Litvack and Merchant were all in attendence.
Litvack agreed with a questioning reporter that the film suggested the idea of life as opera and exposed the doubling in life by a series of doublings, and doublings of doublings. It is Litvack's directorial debut and he commented that it was fitting that the film be screened in Cairo since it was through Youssef Chahine (with whom he worked as assistant director on Caligula at the Comedie Francaise in 1992) that he was introduced to Merchant. Asked why he should take the risk of producing a directorial debut Merchant replied that the history Merchant- Ivory Films has been of 40 years of risks. Merchant expressed support for the Palestinian cause, one that is important to him as an Indian. In today's society, he added, we cannot live in an uncivilised way. People from all over the world have one thing in common, the appreciation of human beings, he stressed. The force of the people is stronger than politicians and religious leaders; we have to fight for the human cause, the right cause.
Following the screening of Cacoyannis's The Cherry Orchard (1999) the director recalled his directorial debut, Windfall in Athens (1953), filmed at the Nahhas Studio in Cairo. On one occasion, Cacoyannis said, he was told that a group of very important officers had arrived without prior arrangement in the studio. Cacoyannis walked right up to their leader saying, "When you are at your desk, do you like to have someone looking over your shoulder?" The leader apologised for the intrusion and left the studio immediately. A year later Cacoyannis discovered that the man in question was Nasser.
Asked about his choice of a Chekhov play to produce for cinema, Cacoyannis said he has always been "an actor's director, and that Chekhov was ideal for casting outstanding actors." He added that one of the most flattering tributes he received through his long career was in Moscow when after screening The Cherry Orchard, he was told by a distinguished array of Russian cineastes that it had taken a Greek to show the Russians how to deal with the playwright on screen. Cacoyannis also revealed during the press conference that he was contemplating making a film about Alexandria and Greek Alexandrians inspired by the life and works of Constantine Cavafy.
Only two senior film critics provided their services as conference coordinators -- Youssef Cherif Rizkallah and Rafiq El-Sabban -- which, besides making their job doubly difficult, meant that many conferences were poorly, if at all, coordinated.
The brilliance of Saura's Tango notwithstanding, the press conference that followed its screening boasted neither adequate coordination nor appropriate attendance. One younger audience member offhandedly commented that he had found the dance sequences tedious and the narrative scaffolding flimsy, in response to which the Spaniard merely pointed out that not all films appeal to all people; and when a viewer is having such a hard time that viewer can simply leave. Would Saura ever come back to the Cairo Film Festival?
"Anything is possible," the director replied equivocally. "Perhaps it will happen again one day."
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