Egyptian filmmaker Tahani Rached spotlights social justice issues

Egyptian filmmaker Tahani Rached talks to Ahram Online about her background and work in documentary making, following screening of one of her films at Cairo's Darb 1718 Centre

Cairo's Darb 1718 hosted a screening of documentary film Four Women of Egypt on 26 June. The director Tahani Rached was present during the screening, introducing the film to the audience and welcoming questions after.
Rached is an Egyptian-born who was raised in Quebec, Canada. She studied Fine Arts at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts School) amid a period that was dominated by protest movements and small organisations supporting the Palestinian cause and women's rights.
As the public sphere for activism and social action was flourishing, Rached felt the importance of joining and participating in civil society.
"I decided that I don't want to be around atelier life; I had to take to the streets," Rached said.
Rached also was involved in social and charity work, but "she didn't find herself engaged." It was not until she met a group of American filmmakers in Quebec where she worked that her life took a turn towards film.
From that time on, Rached has been engaged in the scene of documentary filmmaking, as she started to work for the National Film Board of Canada. From 1980 to 2005, she released a number of films, which received a positive response from critics and audience.
"In Canada, documentary films were screened in public movie houses and television screens and were watched and critiqued by many, strengthening the interaction and reaching a much wider audience," Rached told Ahram Online.
In her experience in Canada, she released a number of films that tackled critical issues, such as immigration, treatment of AIDS, and refugee camp residents. One of those films was Four Women of Egypt (1997).
Rached, as an Egyptian who lived aboard, heard about the diversity of ideological affiliations that took place in some Egyptian circles. She got the idea of "tolerance dispute of diversity," and wanted to present it with real life models.
"I heard primitive ideas about Arabs, Islam, and Egypt, and I also heard about the diversity that extended to cases of having for example a communist and an Islamist in one family," Rached explained. However, instead of featuring a family, she decided to choose a group of friends that translated that idea.
The group included persons representing versatile opinions, women activists, such as Amina Rached, Safynaz Kazem, Shahenda Mekled and Wedad Mitry.
In the film, accepting the differences of each other was the process that strengthened their friendship.
Rached argued that through her films she is trying to capture the voice of people and present it to others, serving as a messenger that enables social interaction and the transfer of ideas.
"In my work, I try to be close to people and their experience by giving them the stage to communicate with others. Everyone, including myself, when finishing the film gains more understanding, which makes him a different person, as we are exposed to others' lives. This, in fact, makes us more eager to know and acquire more knowledge," Rached commented.
This approach was evident in Rached's El-Banat Dol (These Girls, 2007). In it, Rached wanted to deliver the message that girls, who are homeless and living in the streets of Cairo, although subjected to violence, rape, and drugs, are like all other girls at their age.
"I realised that these girls are not any different than my cousins. They all want a better life, love, and a prosperous future. People in the streets are afraid of street children, instead of being responsible and acknowledging the humanity and the needs of these girls," Rached told Ahram Online.
Although El-Banat Dol was banned from being screened commercially by the Egyptian Censorship Committee for Artistic Products, it was screened in the Cannes Film Festival and other prestigious festivals.
Commenting on censorship and freedom of artistic innovation in the context of the artists' current and ongoing protest in front of the Ministry of Culture in Cairo, Rached gave a lot of importance to those events.
"The message should be delivered that there is no art unless we have the freedom to construct that art," Rached explained.
Rached is still looking forward to enabling subjects in her films to transfer their ideas to others. Her latest documentary Nafaas Tawil (Deep Long Breath, 2012) featured a young sound engineer and his father, a university professor. The characters were chosen as a part of the family that she wanted to introduce, with the young engineer as the new generation of the revolution, and his father as the expert who is to guide and aid the newly emerging revolutionary wave.
Nafaas Tawil premiered in September 2012 at the American University in Cairo as part of the International Summer Academy's research program 'Aesthetics and Politics' organised by the Centre for Translation Studies and the Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien.
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