Clean screen?

Fireworks, delays and a damaged DVD: Amira El-Noshokaty survived the drama

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Gerorge, El-Khatib, Hussein at the closing ceremony of the festival

Last week Egypt's first environmental film festival, a five-day event initiated and organised by artist Mustafa Hussein, head of the Society for Promoting Artistic Appreciation of Environmental Development, was held in cooperation with the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs and the Ministry of Culture.

"The first festival of its kind in the Middle East", as Maged George, Minister of State for Environmental Affairs, stated in his opening speech, turned out to be rather badly organised, however. Neither did the ceremony start on time nor had the musical performance, featuring well known actors Ezzat El-Alaili and Nelly, been properly rehearsed. The sound system was faulty, and the audience had to watch two partial runs of the performance before the final, complete run, staged after the minister's arrival who proclaimed Actress Youssra as Egyptian Environmental Envoy. This event aims, according to Hussein, at raising awareness of environmental issues; hence the screening, at Cinema Normandy and the Opera House of over 20 documentaries and feature films, short and long, from 16 countries, to which admission was invariably free. All of which would have been great had the event been properly advertised; beyond the film schedule, however, there was hardly any information of any kind, at least not at the Centre of Creativity at the Opera House; where the Chinese Feature Film Reecat Falls in Love was screened almost an hour behind schedule on the first day of the festival. Moreover, though the auditorium was all but empty, viewers were religiously divided into media and jury. More shocking was the fact that, 15 minutes into the film, the screening came to an abrupt close: after the lights came on we were told the DVD was damaged, could not be replaced and that we would see the next film on the schedule instead. Nor did media figure Samir Sabri, "who was scheduled to present the closing ceremony," read the local papers, ever make an appearance: he evidently protested against the fact that he was neither honoured nor granted envoy status. Young actor Mohamed Nagati replaced him, while veteran footballer Mahmoud El-Khatib was declared Egyptian Environmental Envoy, just like Youssra on the opening night.