EGYPT: Cairo hosts Egypt's first women's film festival

Egypt's first film festival with a focus on women began on Thursday (March 8) in Cairo, with films from around the world being screened during the week at the Cairo Opera House. The festival began on International Women's Day and will conclude on March 16, which is Egyptian Women's Day. The inaugural Festival for Women's Film opened with the Afghani film "Osama," the 2003 film by Siddik Barmak about a 12 year-old Afghan girl living under the Taleban who disguises herself as a boy in order to be able to work and help her family. Film critic and festival organizer Samir Farid said the main criterion for films screened at the festival is that they address women-related issues. "It's not exclusively for women directors. Its for films about women and films that express women and their feelings and their issues and reality and their thoughts and dreams. And the director can be either a woman or a man," he said. The festival's director, Egyptian director Alia al-Bialy, whose experimental film "Darb al-Hasheem" is one of the films that will be screened, said the chosen films show a variety of perspectives on women's experiences. "When we started to gather the films and to choose from them we found that it was full of tragedies and problems and full of sorrow. And on the other hand we wanted to show a brighter picture of women, a picture that has hope and happiness," she said. Sixty-six films will be screened in all, amongst them long and short feature films, documentaries and experimental films. The festival will pay tribute to some of the Arab world's pioneering women filmmakers, such as Bahiga Hafez, one of Egypt's first woman directors who starred in, directed and produced "Layla Bint al-Sahra" in 1937. Iraqi Director Khairiya al-Mansour, whose 39-minute film about the war in Iraq is also being screened at the festival, said making her film during the war was a huge challenge. "The film was made in very difficult circumstances, amongst the explosions, amongst the militias, amongst the thievery, amongst the killing - and the kidnapping of girls - I made this film. The film talks about what Iraq is going through now," she said. Amongst the films on show at this year's film festival are works produced by current students at Egypt's Higher Institute for Cinema. The festival will screen up-and-coming director Sharif al-Bindary, whose films have gained a great deal of attention in the Arab World over the past year. The first, "Sabah al-Ful" ("Rise and Shine"), is a one-actor short film starring Tunisian actress Hend Sabry and focuses on the struggles of a working class mother. The nine-minute film, which is composed of a single shot, is based on a short play by Darian Fo. Al-Bindary said that he did not set out to focus on women's issues. "You can see the film from different angles. It's a difficult film to interpret or to describe on only one level. So it's very natural that it has a connection in one way or another to women, but whatever pushed me didn't concern women in particular -- the subject is human, rather," he said. The other film entered by al-Bindary, "Sit Banat" ("Six Girls"), is a documentary that follows six female university students living together in the coastal Egyptian city of Port Said. Amongst the other featured young directors are Egyptian Heba Yousry, also currently a student at the Higher Institute for Cinema. Yousry's challenging 2005 film "Al-Mihna Imraa" ("The Vocation is a Woman") about prostitutes in Cairo is scheduled to be shown at the festival later this week. Among the filmmakers being honoured at the inaugural women's film festival is Egyptian documentarian Attiyat al-Abnoudy. Al-Abnoudy began making documentary films in the 1970s and the prolific director has been widely recognized for her work. Several of al-Abnoudy's films will be screened at the festival, including her 1971 documentary "Hossan al-Teen" (Horse of Clay), which focuses on members of the Egyptian peasantry whose work is to make bricks. Also being screened is "Ayyam al-Deemoqratiyya" ("Days of Democracy"), her 1996 film about women's participation in the 1995 Egyptian elections for the People's Assembly. The Festival for Women's Film is being funded by the Egyptian non-profit organization the Audio Video Development Foundation (CADRE) which seeks to support the development of the audio-visual arts in Egypt.

ITN Source | March 11, 2007

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