, Syria's most popular comedian, was the honouree of the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (GOCP) this week: Rania Khallaf reports An hour prior to when the ceremony was due to start on Monday, Cinema Palace in Garden City was already overcrowded -- as much with media personnel and star figures (Lebleba, Simon and Hanan Turk, among others) who surrounded the unassuming Syrian actor as with the public who sought to see him. Soon GOCP chairman Ahmed Nawwar was handing Lahham the organisation shield amid uproarious applause. The event preceded the premiere of Aabaa Sighar (Young Fathers), the much talked about Syrian-Egyptian co-production. Starring Lahham and Turk, the film is the story of a newly motherless family. The breadwinner, a police investigator working towards a law degree, is forced by poverty to give up his education to work as a taxi driver following his wife's death -- a decision to which the four children were so opposed they started working in their free time. The character of the father brings to mind Lahham's 1970s TV persona, Ghawwar, a kind of modern-day Goha who, with Lahham's trademark intelligent naivety, reflected satirically on the social conditions of the average man. "I am just thrilled to be among you. Any Arab artist aspires to being honoured in Cairo, Hollywood of the East. And since the value of life lies not in what we own but rather in what we give, your lives must feel incredibly valuable now, considering the joy and pride you have given me... When I was a child of seven, I would stack my 'renewed' clothes underneath my bed on the eve of the feast -- for lack of genuinely new ones. Yet there was this amazing joy while I anticipated the day. That's the joy I'm feeling now..." Thus the modesty, unfailing humour and warmth of the Levantine. A Takhayal (Imagine) Company production engineered by Youssef El-Deeb, the story, written by Lahham, draws on his own experience as a child, when he worked to support his family (he had 11 siblings); and it makes room for children as well as adults in an attempt to be geared to the whole family. Though it starts with "an adult" scene -- the family members gathered at the burial of the mother -- the little girl's comic remarks act to ease the tension, "So, Mama went to heaven. But how do you get there, really? Is it this why or that. Why didn't Mama take us along on this trip to heaven?" Filmed in Syria, much of the visual and cultural content of the film is equally relevant to Egypt... Before the screening started, critic Rafik El-Sabban outlined Lahham's achievement, linking it with such 1960s and 1970s socially oriented comedies as Al-Hafid (The Grandchild), Omel Arousa (Mother of the Bride) and Merati Mudir Aam (My Wife, General Manager). Such films, El-Sabban added, are a rare commodity these days. A risky "adventure" though it might be at a time when the cinema eschews any social commentary, he concluded, it raises the very significant questions of love, responsibility and compassion. Lahham's 26th film, Aabaa Saghira will be screened in the Cairo International Children's Films Festival next month.
