Director Mohamed Khan speaks to Mohamed El-Assyouti about his latest film, Downtown Girls, which will be released during the Eid With Banat Wist Al-Balad (Downtown Girls) Mohamed Khan has returned to the setting of the majority of the more than 20 films he has made, most between 1980 and 1993, once more working on the streets of Cairo on a shoe-string budget. The two films Khan made before Banat Wist Al-Balad represent twin strands in the career of a director who has worked on productions with stars for lead actors while at the same time pursuing a vision of an independent cinema that allows films to be made away from the centres of power within the industry which dictate both form and content. In Ayyam Al-Sadat (Days of Sadat), a biopic spanning 40 years of the life of the Egyptian president, he directed his long-time collaborator, the late Ahmed Zaki, in the only film Zaki produced himself. Khan's next project was Klephty, shot entirely on digital video in downtown Cairo and starring Basem Samra and Rola Mahmoud. Klephty, which takes as its protagonist a character forced to survive on the corrupt city streets by being a little twisted himself, though without betraying his intuitive sense of righteousness, was well-received critically though it did not secure a general release. Thematically it is vintage Khan, a director who has returned throughout his career to making films about the marginalised inhabitants of the city. For Khan Cairo is life itself, a place where millions strive to make a living: he is fascinated by the strategies they employ to eke out an existence on its unforgiving streets. Having filmed so often in Cairo the director longs to make a film about another city. Klephty, he thought at the time, would mark his farewell to both the city and the kind of guerrilla filmmaking he had employed to capture its pulse. Just two years after completing Klephty, though, he found himself back on the same beat with Banat Wist Al-Balad. Not that Khan believes that he has ever operated that far from the mainstream. He is resolute in refusing to call Banat a comeback. "The question that has to be faced is how to make a good, honest film today. And the answer is with great difficulty. I think I have made an honest film, a film that will speak to a generation," says Khan. The real problem for filmmakers, Khan believes, began with the investment law which in setting a floor on the capital needed by film producers effectively disqualified independent producers from the industry. This, in turn, allowed three or four people to form an alliance and monopolise the industry. They finance, distribute and own and run screening venues. It is the last, thinks Khan, that is particularly dangerous in a small market like Egypt's since it effectively prevents the emergence of anything that might be termed independent cinema. The problem was never one of finance. Khan and his colleagues always knew how to raise money to make films. "But now, without access to screening venues you're at their mercy," he says. In the 1980s and early 1990s Khan's films were screened in theatres still owned and operated by the government, which at least had the virtue of following fixed regulations when it came to screening policy. Now, says Khan, films that would be in a position to break even and may make a profit are removed to make way for others that are deemed potentially more lucrative at the box office. He cites Mohamed Abu Seif's Khali min Al-Cholesterol (Cholesterol Free), as an example. "It could have covered its costs but they didn't want to give it a chance. You can file a police report if you object, but it will not change a thing," he laments. But at least Khali min Al-Cholesterol was made. Such projects are increasingly aborted at the pre- production stage. Once a production is given the green light a place will be found for it in screening schedules, though that place is determined by fixed notions of its box-office potential. Cinema owners meet to discuss which venues will screen which films. When Khan happened by chance to attend the screening for distributors/ cinema owners that would determine the release of his own film, having decided to deliver the DTS CD of the soundtrack himself, he discovered to his dismay that they do not sit through the whole film but watch only two reels. He opted to show them the fourth and fifth instead of the beginning of the film. They left the screening with poker faces -- "like secret agents" -- and made their way to the room where they would deliberate the fate of the film. When the committee left Khan was informed of their decisions. Ghawi Hobb (Addicted to Love), the Mohamed Fouad vehicle still being printed in Turkey, would be given the number one slot, with Khan's film taking second priority. "I felt very sad seeing how films are evaluated and marketed. I wonder about the fate of films now being made," he muses. "I feel I made this film in spite of the mafia. It is not as if they welcome me with open arms. And if the film makes money, this doesn't mean they will be more accepting of either the film or its style. They will see it only as an exception to the rule they impose and reinforce. Even though, economically speaking, cost-effect wise, I make cheaper films than the others they still want the others." So how different are Khan's films from the work of these others? Plainly, both in terms of content and style, they are more carefully made. Khan's trademark modus operandi is to minimise the number of takes by using a precise shooting script. He is critical of films that take three to four months to shoot and still produce mediocre results. Banat was shot in less than five weeks, using 106 cans of film stock, while other directors typically use over 200. Such efficient use of resources comes thanks to many years of working with the same strategy and always on location instead of in the more relaxed studio setting. Banat Wist Al-Balad, scripted by Wessam Suleiman, tells the story of two working-class girls who daily commute to downtown. Though the film is ostensibly about young people, the city and friendship, it operates on a second level. "On the surface," says Khan, "it looks one thing, inside you see another." He is particularly pleased with the scenes filmed in the metro -- "the artery of the city". They were completed without evacuating the underground trains or stations, which most directors would have done. The experience of photography director and cameraman Kamal Abdel-Aziz, who has collaborated with Khan under equally difficult conditions in the past, came in handy when filming in the metro. Khan and Abdel-Aziz worked hard towards giving the film a natural look, avoiding any manipulation of lighting and photography for dramatic effect. It is a strategy that Khan believes has paid off in "helping make the characters believable, particularly since I didn't deal with stars but with actors". Khan refutes any suggestion that he is jumping onto the bandwagon simply by casting some successful new faces. He dislikes the aflam shababiya (youth films) label, which he blames for contributing to the shelving of a whole generation of actors, screenwriters and directors. He wanted to make a film about young people without filming in Sharm El-Sheikh or El-Gouna, and without having actors undress. "I wanted to make an entertaining, marketable film but one which has some depth and content," he says. Khan believes he could have produced the film himself, since the money came mostly from satellite channels. "The film was okayed by them first, then the producer got it in his lap. Of course there is an advance. In the end they get the film. They have the distribution rights and own it," says Khan. He is convinced that now, more than ever, the industry needs "a chevalier...a knight to turn it upside down" -- someone willing to invest in modest projects that could spearhead changes in the whole production-distribution network. With LE20 million, he argues, several low-budget films could be made that could easily recoup that sum if they enjoyed release in ordinary cinema venues. Khan has always believed that films can cover their costs when they are allowed to do so. "Today's box-office figures are a mirage," he contends. To make a film for LE5 million and then take LE8 million at the box office is not the end of the story, he insists, since it is only when receipts from satellite channels and DVD sales are taken into account that a final profit can be calculated. Nor does he believe that local box-office receipts are necessarily sustainable. "After it became difficult for Arabs to travel to Europe during the summer many families turned to Egypt and Lebanon. Now thousands of these large Arab families go to the cinemas during the summer, and they watch films over and over again. It is not the local audience that is behind the recent box office boom," he says, "just two movie theatre mutliplexes, Galaxy and Stars, account for a third of all box- office income."
