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Egyptian young filmmakers to participate in Atelier in Cannes Egyptian artists to present film project on Egyptian factory workers in L'Atelier at 2013 Cannes Film Festival
Since its launch in 2005, L'Atelier (The Atelier) looks into 15 projects from young and emerging filmmakers from around the world and invites them to the Festival de Cannes. The young filmmakers get a chance to get in closer contact with their colleagues involved in similar artistic endeavours as well as mingle with professionals from the film industry. This year, among other artists, L'Atelier has invited Egyptian filmmakers Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, who are currently working on a feature film about workers of the shutdown Glucose and Starch Factory in Turah (Cairo). Titled Out/In the Streets, the 80 minute-long film looks at lives and struggles of the workers who are exploited by consecutive regimes ruling Egypt. The feature will intercalate documentary and fiction. "This will allow us to interweave accidental, unintentional, acted and re-enacted material. In the film we will interlace different modes of footage. It will include documentary footage of our subjects' everyday lives in their homes and in informal or temporary jobs, sitting in the coffee shop or visiting friends. The film will also include footage of the rehearsals of the subject-actors preparing for a theatrical performance based on their lives," read a statement by the filmmakers about the movie release. The project received a production grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and will be released by mid 2014. "We knew about the Cannes Atelier when presenting our project at Dubai Film Festival, invited there by AFAC," Jasmina Metwaly told Ahram Online. "The Atelier will be a great opportunity to meet other filmmakers, network with people involved in the film industry and funding business. Most importantly is that we'll have an opportunity to discuss many issues regarding Out/In the Streets with professionals and other filmmakers," she added. Metwaly said that for both of the directors, this is the first long feature project. "Due to the film's hybrid structure and multilayered thematic content, we are curious to enter creative discussions with other artists experimenting with such forms, and then look into many elements such as production and post-production processes," Metwaly concluded. According to the Cannes Festival website, L'Atelier which is a new initiative in the festival's efforts to support young creators, will "promote the film projects and present the directors and their producers to film professionals and the media, organise appointments with producers, distributors and grant distribution managers, and associate the selected filmmakers with the daily life of the Festival by providing them with access to the programme of daily Festival screenings, meetings and events." Jasmina Metwaly is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Cairo, co-founder of 8784 h project and a member of Mosireen video collective. She studied painting in Poznan, Poland and is interested in the points of intersection/division between single-channel image, video and documentary filmmaking. Philip Rizk is a film-maker and activist based in Cairo, Egypt. Rizk has been engaging with community struggles in Egypt since 2008. He has created a number of short films, which have been screened at a variety of platforms including the Berlin Biennale and IFFR. He is a member of the Mosireen collective. Producer of Out/In the Streets is Mostafa Youssef, Egyptian filmmaker whose recent short film, Blue Dive, was officially selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Doha Tribeca Film Festival. He directed and produced documentaries for NGOs including Care, ACT, Environment Television, and for broadcasters such as Al-Jazeera. He is a member of the Mosireen Collective. Out/In the Streets will be produced by Seen Films, a Cairo-based film house. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/71561.aspx
