The only way is up

The return of the Ismailia Film Festival for Documentaries and Short Features (opening on 27 October) has come as a surprise, not least to Salah Mar'i, its new director, as Youssef Rakha finds out
As the head of the 5th Ismailia Film Festival, Salah Mar'i is somewhat out of place. He has assumed no such positions in his long career as a set designer/art director, museum and exhibition designer, graphic artist, documentary film-maker and occasional choreographer of cultural ceremonies.
"Such tasks involve a good deal of enjoyment because one's role is largely creative and artistic," he confides, lighting another cigarette. Though he has no office of his own at the National Centre for Cinema headquarters, part of the City of Arts complex in Haram, he is more welcome than most in other people's offices. Having affably introduced me to critic Ali Abu Shadi, who recently replaced filmmaker Mohamed El-Qalyoubi as the head of the Centre, he walks down the building's spacious, sparsely decorated corridors, looking for a suitable venue for our conversation. Trailing behind us comes an endless string of invitations: "Come in, Salah Bey. What would you like to drink?"
Mar'i is palpably tired -- he has just finished yet another cup of coffee -- and he acknowledges the compliments in an appropriately perfunctory manner. Now he edges slightly closer as I bend down to write, having positioned me before one of the desks in a relatively quiet room. "Lighting a ceremony, supervising an event's publications: this is much more enjoyable work," he continues calmly.
"In the first rounds of the Ismailia Festival, I participated in such capacities only, organising ceremonies and coordinating publicity. In short, I was looking after the outside appearance of the festival, as it were. After that I spent six years participating, in a similar way, in the Aswan Sculpture Symposium, of whose higher committee," he adds solely for my information, "I am still a member."
How did the revival of the Ismailia Festival come about? How was he chosen as its head?
"It was Mohamed El-Qalyoubi," he explains, "who suggested holding the festival again to the Minister of Culture, who in turn accepted gracefully. At this point I was going to be the director of the festival, El-Qalyoubi its head." Soon after however, El-Qalyoubi was relieved of his position as the head of the National Centre for Cinema. Though he had already come up with a comprehensive set of plans and proposals for Ismailia, as Mar'i now recounts, he refused to resume his position as the head of the festival which, he insisted, remained the responsibility of the head of the Centre, whoever that might be. When Abu Shadi assumed his new post, he was extremely eager to see the festival through, yet he too, perhaps to avoid the possibility of tension, refused to take on the task.
"I became the head of the festival," Mar'i explains, "while Amir Salem was sensibly recruited for my former position." At this point two sugar lumps have been placed before us, and Mar'i immediately picks up his, resuming.
"What is the importance of the festival? Well, we won't argue about the importance of this kind of cinema. The significance of such films is many- sided: documentary and short films are important as documentation, as training for their makers, as a chance to experiment with demanding forms. Now you know that the festival had stopped for a while, which is why this year's event assumes an unprecedented edge. The festival should revitalise these important cinematic genres, it gives filmmakers, critics, the press and the viewer a window onto what's happening in this context throughout the world, and it offers an opportunity for exchange and interaction."
As the head of the festival -- and an indelibly modest soul -- Mar'i is eager to play down his involvement in the festival's content, but it is worth remembering that he came into his own working with Shadi Abdel-Salam on documentaries and short features.
"This kind of cinema is in the end more closely connected to art than narrative [commercial] cinema, it is further away from the limelight; and this is why a festival like the present one is important. My ambition, and that of many of those working in the festival, is that such events will broaden the spheres within which they move. I am convinced that if one film theatre in Cairo devoted itself entirely to this cinema, it would find enough of an audience to make a profit. From the Egyptian viewpoint, this won't happen until documentaries and short features are no longer subsidised by the state but properly funded."
This point, Mar'i explains, will be the basis of a seminar to be held in Ismailia with the participation of producers and distributors.
"All the seminars will be accompanied by published research papers, so none of it will be 'mere words,' and in the case of this particular seminar the goal is to specify practicable mechanisms and courses of action, not simply to discuss the issue."
In the course of listing the festival's many official and fringe events -- programmes include an "occidental focus on Palestine," tributes to Hossam Ali, Talal Abu Rahma and Van der Keuken, among many others, while the main seminar topic is "modern technology and the cinema" -- Mar'i is distracted one more time.
"There is something amazing that I'd really like to mention," he asserts. "Despite the political circumstances and the war, the festival this year has attracted large numbers of people who want to come to Egypt -- so much so that many interested parties are coming at their own expense. Perhaps the Ministry of Culture's successful events have given Egypt a reputation -- something the Ministry should get credit for -- but anyway this is an extremely positive tendency that makes the festival all the more worth while."
It remains to be seen what Mar'i's exact role might be in the midst of all this activity.
"The task of the director is difficult -- he is the nerve centre of the entire event and has to pay attention to everything, down to the smallest logistical detail, like coordinating the transportation of the invitees -- and I have not found it easy. And what I have since discovered," he testifies, "is that organising a documentary and short feature film festival is significantly more difficult than organising a regular feature film festival, though the latter is usually held on a larger scale -- something that hadn't occurred to me until we commenced work. We have not only one, but four competitions [documentaries, short features, videos and animation films], and whereas in a feature film festival the tapes are almost always 35mm, in the present event we have three kinds of tape to screen; and coordinating this kind of thing has turned out to be extremely complex."
This, one surmises, is among the reasons Mar'i has not had a chance to participate much in the creative aspects of the festival's organisation, having been consistently bogged down by administrative obligations.
"The posters, and all the publications were designed by Nagui Shaker, and the trophies by Adam Henein," the latter being Mar'i's friend and Symposium companion. "But as the head of the festival one has to select the most appropriate design, since each artist tends to submit more than one. One has to select the motifs that are most appropriate."
Mar'i seems eager to sit back slightly, but he will not do it so long as I am bent down writing. His tone doesn't change much, but it is evident from what he says and his eagerness to say it that this has so far been the most engaging aspect of his work in the festival. Of the four designs Shaker came up with, Mar'i breathes, "the one I picked shows part of a sunflower, with a 35mm tape, in yellow, winding across in the background. I felt this was perfect for Ismailia, it conjured up the city in my mind and seemed to capture something of the spirit not only of the place but the event." As for Henien's trophy, "it fit so exactly that, based on it, we came up with a permanent and fixed logo for the festival, a turn of events with which I've been very pleased. It is made up of part of a stairway with a sky in the background, and across that expanse of sky there is a small galaxy. This, I felt, was very meaningful. It implies that, for the young and not so young filmmakers who direct them, documentary and short films mark an upward path, a path to the stars. Not," Mar'i adds, "the stars of fame or commercial success. The meaning is not intended in this sense at all. Rather," he intones timidly, "they lead to the sublime."
Recommend this page
Related stories:
Shubra, the Greek
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor