The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) has for many years published books on film, many of which are valuable contributions to the Arab film library, and with the parallel programmes producing their own publications, this year the CIFF press is more active than ever. Arab Spring Cinema by the celebrated critic and former president of the CIFF Samir Farid, published through the Arab Cinema Horizons, which is organised by the Film Syndicate, its head Mosaad Fouda and CIFF delegate screenwriter Sayed Fouad. A collection of articles on revolution-related films written over five years in response to screenings at various film festivals, the book is a document of the Arab Spring starting with its outbreak in Tunisia, then Egypt in late 2010-early 2011 and including films on Yemen, Syria and Libya. In his introduction Farid prefaces the outbreak of popular revolutions in the Arab world with America's war on Afghanistan following 9/11, the true start of the 21st century. Technical advances in the audiovisual and communications media contributed greatly to the emergence of a public opinion on these events, however. In this context he also quotes the late Youssef Chahine's dismissive remark: if the picture is bad and the sound is bad, what could be the third thing? Farid says that in Arab Spring films there really is a third thing and that is honesty, which is after all an aspect of cinematic aesthetics. He ends the introduction by reaffirming his faith in the Arab Spring against claims that it is an anti-Arab conspiracy that has caused only destruction and devastation. The book is divided into sections on film festivals further divided into films, starting with the 2011 round of Cannes – an event that witnessed great enthusiasm on the part of the festival administration and president Thierry Fermaux, who refers in the festival catalogue to Egypt's “great cinema” and the desire of its people and Tunisia's for freedom and democracy. The festival programme too included 18 Days, the first feature-length fiction film on the Egyptian revolution, which is made up of ten short films by directors Sherif Arafa, Kamla Abou Zekry, Marwan Hamed, Mohamed Ali, Sherif Al-Bendary, Khaled Marei, Maryam Abou Ouf, Ahmad Abdalla, Youssry Nasrallah and Ahmad Alaa. Farid had written on the controversy surrounding Arafa and Hamid's participation in the film, since both had directed electoral publicity for ousted president Hosni Mubarak's campaign in 2005; in his review of the film, however, he had called it a cinematic demonstration in honour of the revolution. Other major festivals celebrated the revolution with films in their programmes. In 2011 Venice featured Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician, directed by Tamer Ezzat, Ahmad Abdalla, Ayten Amin and Amr Salama, as well as three Syrian films on the ongoing revolution in Syria. In 2012 Berlin featured numerous films on the Arab Spring including the photojournalist Bassam Murtada's documentary Althawra khabar, produced by the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Yom, and Sean McAllister's The Reluctant Revolutionary on the revolution in Yemen. Referencing the film's success and the director's record, Farid spends much time on Youssry Nassrallah's After the Battle, which competed for the Palme d'Or in 2012. He doesn't so much deal with the film however as summarise the views of many critics who found it acceptable or good without being excellent or remarkable. He also deals with the first documentary on the Libyan revolution, Libyan-American director Abdallah Omeish's 2012 HBO television episode Witness Libya and independent Egyptian director Ibrahim Al-Battout's Winter of Discontent, which Farid analyses closely, pointing out some flaws in the screenplay but praising its revolutionary perspective. By the time 2013 arrives, political Islam has managed to appropriate much of the Arab Spring and Farid writes about the Algerian director Merzak Allouache's The Rooftops, which was screened in the Berlinale's official competition in 2013. Once again, Farid's close analysis takes issue with the flatness of the characters and the connection between the five Muslim prayers and the dismal and hopeless human conditions that they punctuate, “as if the characters' behaviour is a result of their being Muslims”. It was the 2014 Berlinale that saw the best documentary on the Egyptian revolution, Jehane Noujaim's The Square, the first Egyptian film to be nominated for an Oscar. Farid also discusses Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Bdirxan's Silvered Water: Syrian Self Portrait, in which Mohammed collaborated with a Syrian young woman who risked her life to shoot real-life sequences of violence and send to him to edit; Farid connects it with non-conventional films like Goddard's. Farid also discusses the Tunisian filmmaker Leyla Bouzid's As I Open My Eyes, which was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2014, at length. He takes issue with the slack pace and slow rhythm of the drama. Of this year's films he focuses on Avo Kaprealian's Houses Without Doors – a poetic reference to refugee tents – which was screened at the Berlinale: “With simplicity and depth, the film links what happened [to Armenians] 100 years ago with the history of carnage in the region.” He describes it as more of an audiovisual poem than a film as such. He also deals with Mohamed Diab's Clash, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard programme at Cannes. The film depicts the aftermath of the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood following massive popular demonstrations in 2013. “Its dramatic structure of restricting the action to a single setting over one day is not new to Egyptian cinema, for there is Salah Abou Saif's 1959 Between Heaven and Earth.” Still it presented Diab with a challenge which he overcame with flying colours. Though it focuses on the major world festivals, the book also deals with important films that did not make it to any of them. Farid saw the French documentary As If We Were Catching a Cobra by Syrian filmmaker Hala Alabdalla, which had premiered in Toronto, at Abu Dhabi in 2012; and he stresses how it seamlessly integrates developments in Damascus and Cairo even though Alabdalla had started filming before the revolutions broke out. A cinematic poem, it is about exile and belonging more than anything. Also based on Abu Dhabi that year, Farid gives the Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid's Millefeuille, the first long fiction film about the revolution, a negative review, having emphasised the Bouzid's previous achievements and his status as one of the best: “The film is so simple it becomes unduly simplistic in dealing with complex reality. From a directorial point of view, the demonstration scenes and battles are literally weak and ineffective.” Farid saw Hala Khalil's Nawwarah at the 2015 Dubai Film Festival, and he gives it an overall positive review even though he provides a detailed analysis that also points to drawbacks in the screenplay, the editing and sound.
