The Supreme Council of Culture will tonight screen Tahrir, a documentary film by the Italian director, Stefano Savora, which tells the story of the Egyptian Revolution. Tahrir was first featured at the Locarno International Film Festival in August and will be shown at the New York International Film Festival taking place from 30 September until 16 October 2011, according to the Supreme Council of Culture. “I never expected the events of late January, early February 2011. On 29 January, after hours in front of the Al-Jazeera website, glued to the fragmentary and low-resolution online chronicle of the Egyptian Revolution, I decided to go there and see from close up who was in Tahrir Square, who were the thousands of people challenging the regime's state of emergency laws,” Savora says. In the film's press release published during the Locarno International Film Festival, Savora states: “Tahrir Square offered a unique opportunity to film the full scope of Egyptian society, people from all backgrounds and social classes, together for the first time, united in the sole cause of bringing down dictatorship, barricaded on this huge square where police and the thugs of the regime could not enter.” Born in Palermo in 1969, Savora studied archaeology and anthropology in Rome and participated in various excavations in Sudan, Egypt, Turkey and Israel. Having worked as a freelance photographer since 1995, in 1999 he switched his principal area of activity to directing and producing documentaries and video installations such as D-Day (2005, Centre Pompidou, Paris). His feature Notes from a Kurdish Rebel (2006), received a nomination for a David di Donatello award. Piombo fuso, 2009 (Cast Lead) was shown at the Locarno Film Festival - Cinéastes du présent and won the Special Jury Prize. Since 2009 he has been collecting the hundreds testimonies of Il Pane di San Giuseppe, a visual history archive dedicated to the living memory of 100 years of rural civilization in Sicily. In 2010, Savona and Penelope Bortoluzzi founded the Paris-based production house Picofilms. In 2011, he also produced and directed Palazzo delle Aquile, winner of the Grand Prix of the Cinéma du Réel Festival 2011. The Supreme Council, in cooperation with Semat film production company has organised a film workshop for young talents to learn about the film industry and film making following the screening of the documentary film. Screening of Tahrir will take place on Thursday 8 September at the Council's Convention Hall at 7.00 pm. Convention Hall, Supreme Council of Culture, 1 El Gabalaya Street, El Gezira
