Long feature films and short films employ the same artistic tools, but their makers are faced with the challenge of makers is that it requires an experience or an insight to be communicated with extreme economy of means, using a kind of shorthand to achieve concision. By many international criteria any film less than an hour long is technically a short but the more typical duration is 10-20 minutes. How can a screenplay express an idea, develop and bring it to a climax and wind down in such a short time? The first challenge of a short film is the choice of a topic that fits within the time frame. Most short film making is seen as a learning experience for filmmakers at the start of their career rather than a unique type of cinema, unlike the art of the short story in relation to the novel. But that should not be the case. Zawya held its first Short Film Festival (26-29 January), which included a number of very high-quality films like The Builders directed by Nagi Ismail. The film opens with an old man in his one-room house, eating at a small table. The opening sentence of the film is uttered by that man to another, in Upper Egyptian dialect: “There is a railway between us, don't make an enemy of me, Abdel-Naeem”. Then the filmmaker moves straight into the drama, placing the viewer in a scene in which the man is resting, having built a grave within the room, facing the window. The filmmaker uses accessories to tell the story. He proceeds to the next scene, in which a bucket full of bloodied water is seen dripping. Zooming out for a wider view, a clothesline with blood-stained garments can be seen. One of the shovels carried by a group of builders waiting for a car to take them to work is also blood stained. A fellow builder asks its owner, Am Ibrahim, about Abdel-Naeem; and saying, “I'll tell you later”, Am Ibrahim asks for and lights a cigarette: the tension appears on his face while he is smoking. The film proceeds to a point when the young man who asked Ibrahim that question is sitting at home, in a state of astonishment. Later, the young man informs Ibrahim of his intention to work on a particular project for a year: the statement appears to be irrelevant, but the director employs it as a signal for time passing. Ibrahim has removed Abdel-Naeem from his life physically, but the dead man's shadow is still continuously present in Ibrahim's room. The film's structure doesn't allow the viewer to fill in the gaps until near the end, especially in the scene that explains the friendship between Ibrahim and Abdel-Naeem, offering a clue by alluding to a fight they have over the rent when a letter arrives from Abdel-Naeem's wife, who lives in the countryside, expressing her worry that something might have happened to her husband and mentioning the two men's old friendship.
The film ends with the return of the young man after a year of working abroad on a project to find Ibrahim dead in his room; he has evidently died while eating. The young man destroys the grave to reveal the by now known secret. The film has little dialogue, short and concise, which demonstrates the filmmaker's talent. Its dramatic language is sophisticated, especially the cinematography whether in the indoor or the outdoor scenes, with the latter communicating a cold mood that complements the drama. The soundtrack is exceptional, especially in the scenes at the building site where the camera moves away and the viewer can hear the humming of the workers and the radio playing Umm Kolthoum. *** Coma Death or perhaps waiting for it was the main element of drama in Al-Ghaybouba (Coma), directed by Amr Ali. The protagonist is a young man living with his comatose father. The director barely uses any dialogue, tracing instead the details of the young man's daily life down to going to the toilet, with only a few scenes showing him treating his father's bedsores or refilling his drip feed. Thus the protagonist's relation with his father's death is explored, and the contrast between his efforts to keep him alive and the fact that he is waiting for him to die is emphasised. The director uses the soundtrack to place this human conflict in a wider context, a place and a time, as we sometimes hear the sound of bombings in the background or gunfire. Even when the young man is watching television, he is watching news of the civil war in Syria. The viewer abruptly discovers through a street vendor that it is in Syria, during the war, that this is going on; it is only then that a picture of the father in military uniform metaphorically alludes to the state's authority and alters the film's meaning. The filmmaker presents a scene in slow motion of the young man chasing a cockroach inside the house after he has already sold most of the furniture, which leaves him surrounded by pale decaying walls and only the father's death bed, which itself at one point begins to chase the young man as he chases the cockroach. The chase ends with a cough from the father, but as it turns out the young man has only imagined it: the father is still in a coma. The film continues to trace the static relation between the young man and his father while the director paves the way for the idea of immigration through the sound of the news talking about refugees. In the last scene we see the young man packing his bags and heading to the door, but at last he feezes in front of the door and returns to sleep next to his father. In spite of the short duration of the film, it is deeply rich and evocative; the filmmaker manages to blend a tragic human story with the political situation in Syria over the last six years. *** Gamila Another film screened at the festival was Hani Mustafa considers Zawya's first Short Film Festival
, directed by Youssef Nomaan. The film doesn't present a dramatic conflict or even an incident but, comprising a dialogue between the protagonist Gamila (Donia Maher) and her therapist Hashem (Hani Al-Metnawi), it is rather a depiction of Gamila's psychological state while she is in a mental institution. The film opens with a dedication to the late Laila Mourad and throughout the film the director uses parts of her song, Love Pledge, a sad song from her 1949 film Ghazl Al-Banat (Candy Floss). This special state that imposes itself through the background music and scenes filmed in black and white creates a gloomy ambience and generates empathy for the old meanings of human relationships. The filmmaker doesn't offer the viewer any background information about the history or the reasons that led Gamila to such a state, mentioning only her shock after the passing away of some of her friends through her therapist, whom she corrects, “You mean they're dead.” This is the opening line in the dialogue, and it holds a key to her character, as if the pain of losing her loved ones has made her search for another world. The conversation discusses her desires and fears and her relationship with love, which is when the filmmaker presents a fantasy scene in colour of Gamila waltzing to a Laila Mourad melody.
