By Amira El-Noshokaty THE CARAVAN of Euro-Arab Cinema, an annual festival featuring some 23 films from all over the world was held in Cairo from 4 to 10 April, with screenings at the Creativity Center, Opera House grounds. A sub-project of the second Euro-med audio- visual program, funded by the European Union with the aim of endorsing cultural exchange between the Arab, European and Mediterranean spheres, is organised by the independent production house SEMAT. SEMAT is the first organisation of its kind in Egypt, founded in 2001 by a group of young filmmakers eager to help produce short and documentary films outside commercial frameworks. The idea is to help emerging filmmakers, air their own work and promote intercultural exchange. According to Hala Galal, the founding director, "The Caravan was what stayed missing after six years of supporting productions, holding screenings and publishing a magazine on independent cinema. It's a kind of window on the world, open to educational workshops and other activities as well as screenings." Without a competition, the festival opened with Pedro Almodovar's latest, Volver (2006, best screenplay at Cannes) -- screened a second time on the same night to an extra 100 viewers who had not managed to get in the first time; more generally, the Caravan brought together a variety of films, the only common element being a relatively fresh perspective. The Nazra (Glance) programme was devoted to Syrian cinema -- an industry established in 1928 but has more recently suffered from constraints on production. Syrian filmmakers Osama Mohamed and Samir Zikri offered, respectively, "Stars in Daylight" (1988), a family portrait about an unhappy wedding bordering on a documentary of Alawite peasant life; and "" (1998), a powerdul biopic of Abdel-Rahman Al-Kawakbi, the Syrian luminary of religious thought who sought refuge in Egypt. The Caravan attracted more of an audience than expected. "The figures have yet to be announced, but I think this year we had a young audience from outside the milieu," says Galal, "which only goes to show that the average filmmaker is open to difference." The problem with cinema is neither filmmaker nor film-goer, she contended, but rather -- simply -- production: "Even European movies, which have big production houses to back them up, have a hard time competing with American commercial cinema. Over here there is little room for variety to begin with -- this society has yet to learn the lessons of pluralism. Hunting one another down will only destroy the industry. In Arab countries like Syria, indeed, you can see the cinema as a happy experiment now coming to an end." But it isn't all about money. "In Egypt today there are award-winning films made by 20-somethings who the film icons haven't even heard about. They make their digital films and send them off to festival on an LE20 blank DVD, and they win prizes without so much as a poster to promote them here. So there is a bright future. The only thing is -- we have to believe in it. It is ideas and passion that will save us."
