Hani Mustafa attends the opening round of the Luxor African Film Festival (LAFF) Economic conditions on the Black Continent have no doubt had a negative effect on the spread of cinema in its various states. The exceptions are the Arab states of North Africa as well as Nigeria which is among the biggest film producers in the world �ê" so much so that there exists a Nollywood along the lines of Bollywood in India. The majority of the films on the festival programme, while they had sub-Saharan African directors, were actually European productions �ê" a logical consequence of the fact that many African directors studied cinema in Europe. The priority remains for such directors to accomplish their works of art without restrictions, economic or otherwise, and to have access to audiences the world over. But it is hardly surprising, in context, that the subject matter of many films is political in nature. Among the full-length official competition screenings was the Beninese director Missa Hebi��'s Waiting for the Vote, based on the novel by the Ivorian writer Ahmadou Kourouma, En attendant le vote des b��tes sauvages: an evocation of the Togolese dictator Eyad��ma, who ruled Togo following two coups in 1963 and 1967. By the 1990s dictatorial regimes were falling the world over, and democratic transformations were taking place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe �ê" probably what drove Eyad��ma in 1993 to participate in the first presidential elections in Togo. Unlike the light-hearted novel, however, Hebi��'s film includes violent scenes of torture. The film recounts the life of a military man named Koyaga, who is tortured under a dictator against whom he eventually leads a coup, replacing him. For decades the same methods of torture are applied while Koyaga rules, persuading one oppositional figure, Macledio, to work as his political advisor and having him persecute his former comrades. Some scenes depict Koyaga dancing with shamans in the forests �ê" perhaps the only comic aspect of the film, reflecting the spirit of the novel.Towards the end of the film a major dramatic shift occurs when a workers movement begins to exercise pressure to obtain its rights. Repression does not put an end to the insurgency, and Koyaga is forced to negotiate with the workers �ê" one result of which is his agreeing to undertake free presidential elections, but it is not clear whether Koyaga is giving in to the workers, the IMF or the advise of the shamans. The viewer does not see what happens at the end. *** The Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache's Normale reflects a political interest relevant to or incumbent on the Arab Spring. Like much of Allouache's work �ê" the comic Salut Cousin (1998), which depicts one Algerians infatuation with France when he visits a cousin who lives there; or the more sombre depiction of illegal immigration, Harragas (2009) �ê" the film integrates political topics into the drama, dealing with what is happening in Egypt and Tunis. It opens with a young director named Fawzi, who wakes up to one of the demonstrations that took place in Algiers (only to subside following a number of rapid measures on the part of the government). Fawzi, who will make a film about the Arab Spring, asks the opinion of a number of his actor on how his film should end. Allouache creates an unorthodox mixture of scenes from the film being made and discussions taking place among the young actors. Yet the true theme of the film has to do with the ambitions and thoughts of the young in Algeria about what is and is not normal there. The film has no end as such, merely suggesting that it is perhaps the particular contradiction that informs the lives of young Algerians that prevented the Arab Spring from taking root in Algeria. It is the film's inner structure that reflects the sense of disruption and dissolution �ê" partly a consequence of the fact that it was filmed in only four days, according to one actress speaking at a seminar following the screening. Allouache did not pay as much attention to the actual making of the film as he does to the philosophical debate generated within and spreading beyond. Even though it won first prize at the Doha Tribeca Festival last October, the film seems to have little importance compared to other films by Allouache. *** Andrew Dosunmu's deals with yet another issue that dogs Africa �ê" immigrants. It tells the story of a Senegalese young man who has been living in New York for several years, showing how he has been unable to go beyond the underworld of African immigrants there. The script adopts a seemingly very simple approach to depicting the immigrant's life, with the camera trailing him through the city on the quest to realise his dream of becoming a musician-singer. While looking for someone to help him with that journey, he falls in love with a young woman who works at a nightclub and must escape her professional obligations to be with him. There is nothing remarkable there �ê" the girl's conflict with one nightlife authority, for example, is as formulaic and melodramatic as any other �ê" but it seems that Dosunmu wants things to be thus. The clear advantage of the film is in its cinematographic language: not a frame is free of evident effort in composition and lighting. It is absorbing and enjoyable less as drama than as a series of paintings. *** The official competition was divided into full-length and short films regardless of whether they are fiction fims or documentaries. Such classification follows the contemporary view that a film is a work of art that can only be described in terms of duration and cannot be bound by further technical strictures. It is well to remember the Palm d'Or going to Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 in the 2004 Cannes Festival. The festival regulations thus divided the films into works longer than, and works shorter than an hour. But if politics features prominently in African fiction films, it is no doubt more central to the documentaries. Such is the case with Taghrid El-Sanhouri's Our Beloved Sudan, which deals with aspects of the political crisis in Sudan and its social ramifications from the 1980s and until the division of the state last year. Sanhouri's effort to include major political sources is commendable. Her interviews with important political players form an integral part of the film. These include the former prime minister Sadiq Al Mahdi; the Islamist leader who backed the current president Hassan Al Bashir's 1989 coup; overthrowing Al Mahdi, Hassan Al Turabi; and Rebecca Garang, the widow of the SPLM leader, who was deputy president. Statements and testimonies by these figures enrich its depiction of political history in Sudan, but �ê" crucially �ê" this is not the only line in the film. Sanhouri manages to show the human side of the story of the recently divided state, mixing accounts and commentaries of the division with what happens to a girl named Zahra: her father is a Nubian from the north and her mother a Dinka from the south. Zahra describes the details of her life, including the persecution she suffers at the hands of half her family, especially her northern stepmother. Though she includes the views of some of Zahra's relations, Sanhouri does not dwell on the conflicting views on unification and division in both parts of the country. The film ends with the 2011 referendum in which the majority of southerners voted for division �ê" the point when the southern wife, having made peace with the northern wife, is once again obliged to return to her homeland: a powerful symbolic statement about what is happening in Sudanese society. *** It remains to be said that the LAFF administration managed to minimize administrative and logistical problems �ê" to be expected in new initiatives in Egypt �ê" to a remarkable extent, providing Egyptian film lovers with a rare opportunity to connect with an integral part of their cinematic culture not otherwise available to them. This is a pioneering experiment that calls for unqualified support from all quarters.
