♣ Together with Culture Minister Saber Arab, the Director of the Cairo Opera House Ines Abdel-Dayeim and the legendary Arabic music expert Ratiba Al-Hefni inaugurated the 21st Arab Music Festival and Conference, directed by Al-Hefni. In her speech, Al-Hefni thanked Arab for his efforts to make this year's edition a success and for his continuing support making it possible for the festival to be held on time. Honoured were the names of the late composer Riad Al-Sonbati and the late musician Mohamed Noah as well as singer Ghada Ragab, calligrapher Fekri Suleiman and maestro Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Ghaffar. Concluding its activities tonight, the festival presented 13 musical concerts featuring 25 artists from six Arab countries: Egypt, Palestine, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. ♣ On the occasion of International Tolerance Day, El Sawy Culturewheel has launched a new campaign that aims to promote gender, religious and cultural tolerance. Running from 13 to 16 November with concerts by Masar Egbari, Mascara and Ana Masry bands, the campaign also includes performances by El Sawy Puppet Theatre. It is held in collaboration with UN Egypt and NGOs supporting the idea of tolerance. UNESCO Cairo Office speaker will participate personally in the event. The Tolerance Days include workshops and open discussions as well as concerts. For three days in a row speakers from different fields will share their know-how and experience, encouraging initiatives and providing recommendations on how to deal with intolerance in Egypt. ♥ The first edition of the Italian Red Sea Festival is scheduled to take place from 15 to 17 November in Hurghada, organised by the Italian agency Eventi, the Red Sea governorate, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and the Italian Cultural Institute in Cairo, and supported by the honorary vice consul in Hurghada Alberto Barattini. The festival has a number of goals such as promoting Italian cuisine and establishing an institute for tourism studies in the Red Sea, promoting Italian fashion in collaboration with the Italian Fashion Academy Ifa represented by Stefania Gulina who is working on opening a branch of the academy in Hurghada. It also aims at spreading Italian culture including music, dance and poetry with the intention of establishing an Italian Cultural Centre in the Red Sea that allows young Egyptians to study and to specialise in specific fields, acquiring the skills necessary for the labour market. ♠ Internationally acclaimed Egyptian singer Tamer Hosni rocked the stage at the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 concert, which brought him together with world renowned R&B star Akon in an exceptional hour-long live performance, as well as Latin singer Clarita Quate and British singer Melaine C, the former Spice Girl. Some 60,000 fans flocked to the Abu Dhabi beach to enjoy a lovely evening. ¨ Minister of Information Salah Abdel-Maksoud jointly with Omani Ambassador to Egypt Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa Al-Harithi launched the activities of the Omani Culture Days in a ceremony held at the Cairo Opera House Small Hall. The activities of the Omani Culture Days included an exhibition of paintings that depict Omani heritage, a book fair and the screening of a documentary entitled Oman Future Builders illustrating Oman's projects of development in various fields. Kuwaiti Ambassador to Egypt Rashid Al-Hamad, Algerian Ambassador to Egypt Nadhir Al-Arabawi and his Tunisian counterpart Mohamed Al-Khamiri as well as journalists, writers and media figures were all present. ♣ The German Ambassador to Egypt Michael Bock attended the celebration of the German Language Teachers' Association headed by Magdi Ramadan in cooperation with Goethe Institute in Cairo at Al-Seadiya School in Giza. Speeches about new techniques in teaching were given by Bock, Director of Goethe Middle East and North Africa Cultural Programme Gabriele Becker, General Manager of Al-Seadiya School Gamal Al-Bahnasawi. By the end of the ceremony, honorary certificates were distributed to the teachers with the attendance of a dignitary of diplomats and teachers. ♥ The inauguration of the IMAX cinema located in Sheikh Zayed in 6 October city gathered a range of celebrity and media figures to celebrate its inauguration and attend the screening of the film Skyfall celebrating the golden jubilee of James Bond. IMAX is a new motion picture format of proprietary cinema projection standards with the capacity to record and display images of greater size and resolution than conventional film systems, in a gigantic cinema hall and screen. The opening ceremony featured the honouring of actors Hussein Fahmi, Elham Shahine and Khaled Al-Nabawi, belly dancer Dina, filmmakers Khaled Youssef and Rami Imam, producer Mohamed Al-Adl, TV anchors Hala Sarhan and Mona Al-Shazli, singer Hisham Abbas, while the honorary shields were distributed by producer and owner of the IMAX complex Gabi Khouri. Present were actors Hani Ramzi, Ghada Adel and her husband director Magdi Al-Hawari, Eiad Nassar, Dorra, singer-cum-actress Nicole Saba, actress Basma and her husband former MP Amr Hamzawy. ª On 14 November, the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) launched “PhotoCairo 5: more out of curiosity than conviction”, a contemporary art project in Downtown Cairo curated by Mia Jankowicz. “PhotoCairo 5” will last through 17 December 2012 offering an impressive line-up of exhibitions, a symposium, two screening programmes, a mentorship programme and a publication. It is centred around a contemporary art exhibition focussing on art's ability to discuss and provoke the movement of people. This un-themed exhibition presents existing and newly commissioned works that operate through or on paradigm shifts, political or personal, offering an argument for art's ability to move people and trigger responses. The exhibitions cover a number of locations around Downtown Cairo, including the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC), the Townhouse Factory Space and a shop front on Mahmoud Bassiouni Street, showing the works of 15 artists from Egypt and abroad. For the opening weekend of the festival the CIC will hold a symposium on 17 November at the Goethe Institute in Cairo, addressing some of the key tensions of the project. PhotoCairo 5 also features two screening programmes. The first is of Harun Farocki films between 25 and 30 November at Beirut, and the second entitled The Edge of the Image, curated by Tamer Al-Said, between 5 and 11 December, at Cimatheque. A number of artists are engaging in a process of peer mentoring in order to develop works specifically for “PhotoCairo 5”. Through intensive conversations, artist Doaa Ali has mentored artists Sara Sami, Noura Seif, Mahmoud Tarek, and Samaa Wali. PhotoCairo 5 is held in partnership with the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Beirut, the Goethe Institute, Egypt Independent, Cimatheque and Ismailia for Real Estate Investment and made possible through the support of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, the British Council, the Goethe Institut in Cairo, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Culture Resource, Institute Camıes and the Embassy of Portugal in Cairo. (All venues will be open to the public 12-8pm every day and all works with text are bilingual in Arabic and English. For further information, please call 2396 4272). ¨ Tunisian actress Hend Sabri will head the feature narrative jury of the fourth Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar, which will take place from 17 to 24 November. In addition to Sabri, the jury includes Indian director Ashutoush Gowarikar, Algerian writer Mohamed Moulessehoul, who publishes his work under the pen-name Yasmina Khadra, and Emad Amralla Sultan, deputy general manager of cultural affairs of Katara Cultural Village. For this year, the festival will showcase 87 films from 34 countries across the world in four different competitions: Feature Narrative, Short Feature, Documentary Narrative and Made in Qatar, which aims at celebrating new Qatari talents. The fourth edition of the festival will open with Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. ♣ A press conference and a celebration was organised by the management of the 35th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) at one of Cairo's leading hotels overlooking the Nile in the presence of Minister of Culture Saber Arab, President of CIFF Ezzat Abu Ouf and Manager of CIFF Soheir Abdel-Kader. The celebration holds a message of peace for the world as it is the festival's first round after the revolution. The celebrities present included among other actors Mahmoud Yassin, Khaled Abul-Naga, Mahmoud Kabil, Nadia Al-Guindi, Sawsan Badr, Menna Shalabi, Nelly Karim, Nahla Salama, Nabila Ebeid, Fifi Abdu, Ghada Ibrahim, as well as the head of the Catholic Centre for Egyptian Cinema Father Boutros Daniel and veteran director Khairi Beshara.
