In progress: Day and night
By
Youssef Rakha
Islam El-Azzazi graduated from the Film Institute in 1993. Since then he has directed many documentaries as well as the dubbing of Arabic versions of several Disney animation classics, acting in one of the latter. For three years El-Azzazi was a member of El- Warsha Theatre Company, as assistant director, actors' coach and rehearsal administrator. He is a founding member of Semat, the independent film production house. El-Azzazi is an acclaimed photographer and poster designer. He has written poems and short stories as well as film scripts.
The present few weeks are a hiatus that, paradoxically, I can't seem to enjoy. I've just completed shooting Nehar wa Leil (Day and Night) and am soon going to go to Germany to film a documentary about Berlin -- a Geothe Institute project. The idea is for the filmmaker in question to produce a sketch of the city with the camera, a study rather than a finished work. And it's a good thing that I recently went to Berlin, to attend the Berlin Film Festival, because while I still don't know the city all that well it won't be completely new to me. The documentary will be screened as part of the Geothe Institute programme on the fringe of the upcoming Cairo Film Festival. I'm really looking forward to this as the idea of the sketch makes me confident that it won't be difficult to produce something reasonable. And though I formed an impression of the city that made for a vague concept -- somewhere between Bauhaus and Venetian carnival -- that may change completely.
As for shooting the film, the satisfaction comes partly from relief that it's finally done. The script has existed in some form since 1992. I wanted to undertake it for my graduation project but I hadn't written it properly and in the end I did something else. In 1994 I wrote the first draft, and I made changes in 1995 when there was an opportunity to produce it through the National Centre for Cinema; that didn't work. In 1997 I worked on it again, when there was another production opportunity; that too fell through. Then I forgot about it for a while. In July 2002 I started working on the script again, on and off. But I had made the decision that I was doing it, and the opportunity to produce it through Semat began to present itself. Finally the final draft came into being. It still had the same concept but at the same time it was very different from the first draft. Starting in January 2003, I began to make preparations, also on and off, until I finally shot during six days in July. This sounds ridiculous, of course, to have spent seven months preparing for a short feature. But it was a question of gathering a crew -- every time I had a crew it seemed to disperse, and I worked with two particularly busy leads (Basem Samra and Hind Sabri), which made it difficult to put together a timetable by which everyone could abide. Anyway, it happened at last.
I am very happy with the filming even though it was the thing I was most apprehensive about initially, largely because, despite the time pressures and all the difficult contingencies, there was an atmosphere of enjoyment in which everyone partook -- the crew, the actors and myself. In the script, to mention one example of this, there is a shop that's being opened and one of the painters dances to "Shafiqa wa Metwalli". Before the day we filmed that scene, the workers were asking me about the mawwal, which recorded version I wanted -- everyone was involved. And I said there was only one authoritative version, the one sung by Hefni Ahmed Hassan. On the day I got there and people were working on setting up the lights etc., nothing had started yet. But "Shafiqa wa Metwalli" was playing, and it was as if everyone was listening and nobody was listening while they worked. That confirmed my feeling that people were deeply involved in what was happening. When in the scene the painter (Basem Adli) started to dance, people responded in a remarkable way: it was as if there had always been an energy generator that was suddenly turned on. And throughout shooting people followed closely: they would applaud a particularly good shot, and stay silent after an ordinary one. That also served as an indication of how well we were doing.
Another positive thing is that I worked with two actors who perhaps hadn't seen each other but were familiar with each other's work and had a good deal of respect for each other. Basem had seen Samt Al-Qusour [Sabri's Tunisian debut] and Hind was aware of his roles. And they had completely different ways of working. With Basem we rehearsed a lot, improvising on the basis of real-life characters who were relevant and sometimes even acting out scenes that were not in the script. Hind doesn't like to rehearse, she doesn't like to repeat the dialogue too many times. So instead she wrote down a description of the character which deeply impressed me, as she not only understood the character I imagined but saw things in her that I hadn't seen. So you've got two actors who without knowing each other or sharing a method of working, can maintain a certain harmony between them -- that was great. So the long wait did pay off in the end when I finally shot.
I will start editing soon, I am preparing for Germany and in the mean time I've completed designing the poster for a short film by Kamla Abu Dhikri, a fellow Semat member, Nazra lil-Samaa (A Look to Heaven) and will be designing the cover of the upcoming issue of Amkena, the Alexandria-based magazine. I designed the covers of the two last issues and I'm really pleased with them. I want to add that it remains very important despite possible negative associations and the hectic pace of life to keep listening to music, music I've always liked.
