Surveying short and documentary film competition fare before he proceeds to the highlights of the event, Mohamed El-Assyouti sheds disturbing light on the 11th National Film Festival -- an accurate measure of local production That the 11th National Film Festival had an official competition would imply the application of curatorial criteria. Yet the 121 documentaries and short films screened in this framework were widely divergent in quality -- so much so that one could say the quota system introduced this year (giving films produced outside government- sponsored and private-sector companies a fair share of representation) in effect replaced standards of competence. The quota system is of course positive in itself -- perhaps the notion of gradual reform dominating the political arena has finally caught up with the cultural establishment -- a function of the influx of Arab satellite channels, the proliferation of a decentralised market of video CDs, the emergence of at least one non- governmental production company, the Ford Foundation-sponsored SEMAT, and several cultural centres' increasing interest in screening short and documentary films. Yet, as the festival showed, the possibilities of making such films is still by and large dominated by the Culture Ministry's National Cinema Centre (NCC), the Higher Cinema Institute (HCI) and the Information Ministry's Radio and Television Union (RTU). It would be fair to say that the short films produced by the relatively recent Nile Thematic Channels (NTC) are inferior to their predecessors, produced during the heyday of the RTU in the 1960s. With few exceptions, corruption and nepotism in the RTU have acted to stifle sincere attempts at thought-provoking, even simply entertaining drama for decades. Hence the weak characterisations, overstretched plot lines and weak acting -- not to mention absurdities like high-tech editing combined with faulty mixing, for example -- of much TV-produced fare. In this sense it is hard to see how a selection committee could have consciously chosen them for the competition. Particularly objectionable were the Saudi Al-Fajr productions Al-Nabighaa Abdel-Fattah El-Arwash (The Genius Abdel- Fattah El-Arwash) and Al-Nabighaa Anas Mustafa (The Genius Anas Mustafa), docudramas about children learning the Quran by heart directed by the Egyptians Ezzeddin Said and Ahmed Medhat, respectively: some half of the 30 or so viewers present left the auditorium almost as soon as the screening started. "I object to their inclusion simply because they are Saudi," critic Safaa El-Leithi exclaimed, "in terms of both theme and production -- they are in no way Egyptian; why should they be included in a national festival competition?" In Akher Al-Duniya (The End of the World), on the other hand, an RTU production about a little village boy whose father leaves behind to work elsewhere, Ahmed Abdel- Zaher manages to strike a convincing balance between cinematic poise and the mental depth and human interest of a Youssef Idris short story -- one of many he has worked on. Drawing in the relatives and colleagues of the student directors, HCI graduation projects were rather better received. Marwa Alieddin's Ya Sadiqi (My Friend), for one, opens with a bearded man announcing that this is the most important day of his life; it is, as the viewer later discovers, the day he dies. The soundtrack is a loop of a popular religious chant in which the phrase ya sadiqi (my friend) is repeated ad nauseam. Among other things, hooded dancers circle the coffin, following the protagonist to his grave. This religiously inspired film about the vanity of life turns out to be an example of preaching through art: one assumes the audience who applauded it was not identical to that which applauded Hisham Fathi Abbas's Silhouette, a comic take on niqab in which a husbands confuse their fully veiled wives outside an ice- cream shop. A heavy-handed statement against the practice, in common with several other HCI offerings, Silhouette nonetheless does not amount to much more than an audio-visual joke. In Youssef Osman's Bidoun Ta'liq (No Comment), on the other hand, through a Talaat Harb window a young man watches men in suits forcing a version of himself into car and driving away and, following, witnesses his alter ego's execution -- only to find a third version of himself looking out the window on returning to the house, where the experience commenced in the first place. NCC contributed Innaharda 30 November (Today is 30 November), a truly competent film directed by the promising filmmaker Mahmoud Soliman and starring Basem Samra in which a man intent on killing himself on that date thinks better of it thanks to the involuntary intervention of characters he encounters. Student projects from the new private film school Artlab, however, displayed the same problems as NTC and RTU productions, though they lacked their big budgets: once again the quota system seemed to be the principal factor in choosing them. Two sensational shorts came from Cairo University's Faculty of Mass Communications. The first, by Raghda Abdel-Rahman's Ahlam lil-Bii (Dreams for Sale), a dramatisation of illegal immigration in which several villagers pay LE14,000 each to be transported illegally into Italy -- only to find themselves stranded in a small boat in the middle of the stormy Mediterranean. The second, Haitham Karam's Ibn min fi Masr (In Egypt, Whose Son are You?) is about the much publicised case of a Cairo University political science graduate who, passing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs exams, was rejected as a candidate for the diplomatic corps on the grounds that his parents were fellahin -- to which he responded by jumping off the roof of the ministry. Of the festival's full-length features, Saad Hendawy's debut Halit Hobb (State of Love) is the story of two brothers (director Seif and singer Youssef) who are separated in childhood: one grows up with the father, in Paris; the other with the mother, in Egypt. In search of a sense of identity, they are finally reunited when Seif, made to feel uncomfortable in the wake of 9/11, decides to return to Egypt. In parallel plotlines, the film follows their two lives -- their friends, their girlfriends, their connection with art. Seif is frequently accosted and taken to the police station for "soiling Egypt's reputation", while Youssef falls out with producers who insist that he should imitate the look of blond singers. The girlfriends -- the one Tunisian-French and liberated, the other middle-class Egyptian and extremely conservative -- are likewise contrasted. At the post- screening conference, however, it was the allegedly explicit "love scene" that audience members complained about, questioning the morality of the character ending up in bed with his girlfriend when he visits her right after the death of his friend. Hendawy responded by stating that in moments of loss one needs a human touch, sexual or otherwise, to which one veiled audience member furiously wondered how it was the director did not realise that relationships outside the framework of matrimony were shameful enough not to be shown on screen. The principal glimmer of hope in the short film department came from a two-year workshop jointly organised by SEMAT and the Jesuit Association in Alexandria. With an electronic soundtrack by Mahmoud Refaat, Mohamed Fathi's Hadd Haqiqi (Sincere Person) is an exciting editing experiment about the oppressive nature of institutions. Self-funded filmmakers Rami Abdel-Gabbar and Tamer El- Said -- contributing Jalid (Snow) and Yawm Al-Ithnain (Monday), respectively -- was by far the most encouraging thing in the festival. An audiovisual poem, Abdel-Gabbar's film uses a fixed camera in combination with Arabic calligraphy to powerful effect, while El-Said's seven-minute film is an account of the same day told once each by husband and wife ( ithain is Arabic for "two"), starring Boutros Ghali and Hanan Youssef, whose excellent performance adds much to the whole endeavour. After allowing each other an opportunity to do something special -- he smokes a pipe for the first time, she reminisces about her childhood -- their lovemaking regains a long-lost edge. With an impossibly small budget of LE1,000, the film is a remarkable achievement highlighting the negative impact mainstream production tends to have on the quality of filmmaking in Egypt -- an impact to which the event bore ample testimony. RELEASED last summer to heated controversy, Osama Fawzi's Bahib Al-Sima (I Love Cinema) received the lion's share of the 11th National Film Festival's feature film awards: best film (Hani Fawzi), best director (Osama Fawzi), best script (Hani Fawzi), best lead actor (Mahmoud Hemeida), best lead actress (Laila Elwi), best supporting actress (Aida Abdel- Aziz), best editing (Khaled Marii) as well as a special award for the child actor Youssef Osman. Tareq El- Erian's Tito came in second: best cinematography (Sameh Selim), best set design (Mahmoud Baraka), best supporting actor (Khaled Saleh) and best editing (Khaled Marii again). Hala Khalil's Ahla Al-Awqat (The Best of Times) received the best directorial debut award, the second best film award (Sami El-Adl) and a special award for actress Hind Sabri. Inas El-Deghidi's Al-Bahithat an Al-Huriya (Freedom Seekers) received the third best film award and the best music award (Ragih Dawoud). The best animated short award went to Ali Saad Mahib's Kalimat Mutaharika (Animated Words), the best short fiction film award went to Tamer El-Said's Yawm Al-Ithnain (Monday) and two documentary film awards went to Zeinab Ouf's 10-minute Atiyaf (Shadows) and Mohamed Shaaban's 25-minute Al-Makhazin Al-Matthafiya (The Museum Storerooms).
