For the love of heritage Under the auspices of Culture Minister Abdel-Wahed Al-Nabawi and Al-Beheira Governor Mohamed Sultan, the third International Folklore Festival opens tonight at Damanhur Opera House. Ending on 5 May, the festival is organised in collaboration with the General Organisation of Cultural Palaces, the Cultural Development Fund and the Foreign Cultural Relations Sector. It brings together 12 dance troupes from Algeria, Palestine, Greece, Indonesia and Togo as well as Egypt. Folk heritage troupes from Menoufiya, Port Said, Al-Arish and Assuit are all participating. The Cairo Opera House Chairperson Ines Abdel-Dayem said that the opening ceremony will present a show performed by the Foursan Al-Sharq Lil Turath (or Knights of the Orient for Heritage). El-Sawy Culturewheel will celebrate the 12th World Book Day through organising its book fair (30 April- 6 June) with the goal of supporting emerging writers and book cover designers. A number of leading publishing houses will participate. The guests of honours are novelist Youssef Zeidan and journalist and TV presenter Yousri Foda. Seminars, workshops and discussions will be held alongside the book exhibition. At the closing ceremony of the International Theatre Festival presented by TV presenter Poussy Shalabi, the Supreme Institute of Theatre Arts honoured a number of actors including Farouk Al-Fishawi, Lebleba, Ragaa Hussien, Ghada Adel as well as the owner of Al-Mehwar satellite channels Hassan Rateb. The jury included director Magdi Abu-Emera, Head of the National Centre of Theatre and Music Assem Nagati, actress Samira Mohsen, professor Medhat Al-Kashef and journalist Sobhi Al-Sayed. The honourary awards were distributed by actor Ashraf Zaki and dean of the institute Abdel-Moneim Mubarak. The British University in Egypt (BUE), located in Shorouk, organised a graduation party for the students at the headquarters of the BUE featuring singers Rami Sabri, the 8% band, electric urban folk singers Oka and Ortega and the Sharmovers band along with DJ Walid Al-Hariri. The Travel Writers' Association held a conference to honour former minister of tourism Hisham Zaazou with the attendance of the new Minister of Tourism Khaled Rami, board members of the tourism chambers, President of the Travel Writers' Association Galal Dweidar and Vice-President of the Association Salah Attia. In their speeches, Dweidar and Rami praisedZaazou's attempts to refresh tourism in Egypt during the last four years of political unrest and economic recession. Commemorating 400 years since the publication of the second part of Don Quixote, the Cervantes Institute (Spanish Cultural Centre) and the Spanish Embassy in Cairo organised a series of lectures entitled "About Cervantes.” The programme opened on Thursday 23 April with a lecture entitled "The Experience of Translating the Fools of Don Quixote" delivered by professor of Andalusian literature at the Faculty of Arts Arab Language Department, Cairo University Suleiman Al-Attar, who translated the novel into Arabic. It was followed by three lectures "Quixote in Egyptian Drama" by director Mohamed Fadel, "The Fiminine Presence in Quixote's Novel" by author Marta Rivera and "Quixote in Latin America" by writer Jorge Edwards. The President of the American University in Cairo (AUC) Lisa Anderson was elected to the 2015 American Academy of Arts and Sciences alongside Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, and Tony award winners as well as some of the world's most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts. “We are honoured to elect a new class of extraordinary women and men to join our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, the chair of the academy's board of directors. “Each new member is a leader in his or her field and has made a distinct contribution to the nation and the world. We look forward to engaging them in the intellectual life of this vibrant institution.” Last week, the Japan Foundation Cairo Office organised a lecture and workshop on the art of self-defence for everyoneusing Japanese Budo-Taijutsu Martial Art as part of the Japan Foundation's Library theme in April, Japanese Martial Arts. A large audience benefited from instructor Tamer Talaat and his team's mastery of Budo-Taijutsu moves. Founding Chairman of the German University in Cairo Ashraf Mansour and University President Mahmoud Abdel-Qader attended the tenth annual internship and employment fair with the participation of 10 universities including Berlin, Tubingen, Ulm and Furstenberg as well as the German Society for International Cooperation and the scientific exchange organisation DAAD, 92 organisations in all. A regional conference on intellectual property entitled “The Challenges of Implementing Intellectual Property Laws in the Arab World” was held on 22and 23 April at the Arab League's General Secretariat in Cairo to mark World Intellectual Property Day. Organised by the Intellectual Property and Competitiveness Unit of the Economic Sector at the League in collaboration with SMAS-IP, the conference aimed to build a regional platform for multilateral dialogue, tackling various issues related to intellectual property in depth. The keynote speakers were Maha Bekheet, the head of the Intellectual Property and Competitiveness Unit of the Economic Sector at General Secretariat of the Arab League and Nidal Al-Kharouf, the regional CEO of SMAS-IP. Hours before the Swedish premiere of Factory Girl, the film's leading actress Yasmin Raeis visited the Palestinian Ambassador in Sweden Hala Fariz to congratulate her on being the first Palestinian Ambassador in a western European country after Sweden's recognition of the Palestinian state in October 2014. Born to a Palestinian father, Raeis commented, "I believe that the Swedish recognition of Palestine is a significant step highlighting the country's respect for freedom and human rights. I really hope that the rest of the European states and the rest of the world will follow the example of Sweden and welcome the presence of a Palestinian embassy on their lands." The film was released in Sweden on Friday 24 April through Arab Cinema in Sweden (ACIS), the distributer of Malmo Arab Film Festival, marking its premiere outside the Arab world.
