Mohamed El-Assyouti wraps up a year on the ever bigger screen Egyptian cinema was very busy in 2006, with a major face-lift in terms of both content and style, sadly more apparent than real. The year opened with a return of independent-minded director Mohamed Khan with Banat Wist Al-Balad (Downtown Girls), a film siding with two girls on the margins of society who struggle to survive their adverse social and economic conditions and manage to have the romantic experience of which they dream. Media mogul Emadeddin Adeeb released his production company Good News's two debut films: Marwan Hamid's 'Imarat Ya'qoubian (The Yacoubian Building) and Sherif Arafa's Halim -- both playing to the stellar status of screen icons, respectively Adel Imam and the late Ahmed Zaki, who died in the course of filming. The first is based on Alaa El-Aswani's eponymous best-seller, whose popularity derives largely from a concerted effort to analyse contemporary Egyptian social and political life. The second, a biopicture of the 1950s and 1960s patriotic-cum-romantic singing legend Abdel-Halim Hafez, was promoted as featuring "a legend playing a legend", capitalising on Zaki's terminal illness. Adeeb splashed out in the making and distribution of both films, sparing neither effort nor resources; partly as a consequence of this, Yacoubian was selected in the official non-competition section of the Berlin Film Festival and it was screened in the Rome, Tribeca and Sao Paolo festivals. Muslim Brothers disgruntled with its explicit content discussed the film in parliament, condemning the portrayal of a homosexual couple, a secondary plot-line that was treated less subtly than it might be, in moralising tones. Elsewhere the phenomenon of the veiled actresses returned with a vengeance: young stars Hala Shiha and Hanan Turk defected to the hijab-donning masses, with the former performing the lead in Kamil Al-Awsaf (Perfect in Everything) with her headscarf on at all times, and the latter's latest released film is the 2005 production Dunia, a critique of the oppression of women including an episode on female genital mutilation which it took the censor a whole year to release -- only last week. During Ramadan, satellite channels screened serials starring Suheir Ramzi and Suheir El-Bababli, who both "retired" in favour of the veil over a decade ago -- and are now making their pious comeback with the object, as they described it, of "setting an example". At the other end of the spectrum, the butchers-turned-producers Al-Subki Brothers, among whose many hits was the phenomenal 2002 cult classic Al-Limbi, produced three films starring the new kid on the block, the notorious urban folk singer Saad El-Sughayyar, who made such a name with numbers about donkeys and grapes he is regularly played in school and university festivals. The titles of the first two Lakhmit Rass (Confused in the Head) and 'Alaya Al-Tarab bil Talata (I Swear Thrice by Singing) are complex puns that can be read as references to meat dishes. The latter also stars, opposite El-Sughayyar, the notoriously risque belly dancer Dina -- whose home porn video with businessman Hossam Abul-Fetouh made her incredibly well-known across the Arab world, and who more recently gave an impromptu, provocative dancing performance in front of the Talaat Harb theatre where the film was released during the last Eid, setting off a well-publicised orgy in which women were indiscriminately attacked -- together with musicians Mohamed Attiya and Rico, who have appeared in videos of El-Sughayyar's songs. El-Sughayyar's vehicle for the next Eid is Qisat Al-Hayy Al-Shaabi (Story of the Popular Quarter), which co-stars comedian Talaat Zakariya, who provided, also on the previous Greater Bairum, the commercial hit Haha wa Tufaha, which contains an exlpicitly erotic song by the video-clip star Marwa. Comedian Mohamed Saad's 2006 film Katkout (Chick) was released late this summer, in August, which had a negative impact on the box office and made him wary of a similar delay in the release of his 19th-century version of Romeo and Juliet in the summer of 2007. Among the better films of 2006 were screenwriter Tamer Habib and director Kamla Abu Zekri's Al-'Ishq wal-Hawa (Of Love and Infatuation), starring Ahmed El-Saqqa, Menna Shalabi and Mona Zaki -- a return to tear-jerking melodrama, in which it was hoped that the popularity of Al-Saqqa as an action hero would draw a young audience into a relatively more sophisticated subject matter with intersecting storylines revolving around the question "What is love?". For its part director Mohamed Mustafa and screenwriter Omar Gamal's debut Awqat Faragh (Passtime) boasts no stars among its cast -- a calculated risk on the part of veteran producer Hussein El-Qala, who managed to make a relatively low-budget film with strong content addressing adolescents in search of a sense of purpose. Similarly, director Mohamed Ali's debut Li'bit Al-Hobb (Love Game) was a decent effort highlighting the problem with Egyptian stereotypes of female respectability but a little too dependent on the Hollywood romantic comedy model. Star coemdians Ahmed Helmi and Karim Abdel-Aziz arguably managed to take a step further in their careers by releasing relatively better quality vehicles in the summer of 2006. But this week sees two new vehicles in which the two actors reunite with their regular collaborators screenwriters Tareq El-Amir and Bilal Fadl and directors Wael Ihsan and Ahmed Galal -- respectively. Less cheerfully, the 30th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF, 28 November - 8 December), did not live up to the competition with younger events like the 3rd Dubai and the 6th Marrakech festivals even despite an LE5 million contribution from businessman Naguib Sawiris. It failed in terms of both quality and quantity of films and number and profile of guests. Of far better quality, though on a limited scale, was Cairo's First Independent Film Festival, devoted to digital films whatever their length, which took place parallel to the CIFF.
