Very few screens, but fewer audience members, and even fewer moments at Alexandria's premiere film event this year, finds Mohamed El-Assyouti Prior to the opening of the 21st Alexandria Film Festival, the government had flaunted many a positive change in the city. No matter that some complained of the expansion of the Corniche and the accompanying renovations in the façades of the buildings that line it causing a positive drop in the living conditions of inhabitants; the façades looked pretty enough, anyway. Which is more than one can say for the Alexandria Film Festival, of which not even the façade is sufficiently inviting this year. No longer are the downtown theatres participating, with one out of six Amir Cinema screens being the only evidence of the festival in the city centre. Holding four to five shows per day, cinema personnel complain that no more than 20 viewers have attended any one show; the predominantly male audience, for their part, complain of a lack of nudity and sex -- questioning the very designation of the fare on offer as "festival films". Ten years ago there would have been more of them, and they were even willing to buy tickets at higher rates on the black market; today the vast majority of sex hungry festival devotees have recourse to satellite TV. Even the official venue -- the Family Mall Cinema, in San Stefano, owned by the Egyptian Television's Production Sector, whose head, Mahmoud El-Leithi, also chairs the Egyptian Cinema Writers and Critics Association (ECWCA), the festival's organiser -- has been screening the programme only during the day, for the benefit of the jury: cinema manager Abdel-Moneim Barakat explains that since no audience shows up, afternoon and evening shows have been relegated to the usual commercial fare. Indeed, as the pleas of Albanian jury member Mevlan Shanaj with Alexandria's local TV audience demonstrated, such dire lack of publicity is but one of many drawbacks of an extremely meagre budget of LE350,000 -- provided by an anonymous sponsor together with the Alexandria Governorate and the Ministry of Culture -- barely enough for a three-day screening event. Another drawback is that, unable to rent copies of, let alone properly host, good films, the so called festival ends up with a programme of low artistic quality -- a charge levelled annually at the Alexandria Film Festival, that. So much so that last Friday, members of the jury walked furiously out of the screening of the Bosnian film, Days and Hours, complaining to veteran critic Ahmed El-Hadari, the honorary president of the festival and its principal dynamo, of unreasonably low artistic standards. How wrong can one go with 12 geographically delimited choices? Indeed only two competition entries -- Alejandro Aménabar's Mar Adentro (Sea Inside) and Abdel-Latif Kechiche's L'esquive (The Evasion) -- have received any awards or critical acclaim. Budget drawbacks also include a dearth of international figures; this year only five were invited, and they had to earn their invitations by becoming jury members or offering their films for screening, or both. Such was the case with Turkish director Biket Elhan, Albanian director Mevlan Shanaj and Moroccan director Mohamed Asly, who won last year's best film award. Other guests are Spanish critic Antonio Weinrichter Lopez and French critic Patrice Carré as well as, representing Egypt, director Mohamed Khan (the jury head) and veteran actress Libliba, who both double as honourees along with veteran actor Hussein Fahmi and staged fight coach Mustafa El-Toukhi. And one cannot help thinking that, given the lack of any form of financial reward -- even prizes comprise only a statuette and a certificate -- the average filmmaker is unlikely to muster the energy even to fill out an application form for participation in the festival. And with neither guests nor exciting screenings, any festival is likely to prove a flop. Add to this the lack of an audience -- a consequence of lack of publicity -- which makes movie theatre managers reluctant to host the festival, as well as the difficulty in reserving rooms for local guests given the peak summer season and a series of early-September conferences, and you will soon start wondering why the ECWCA insists on calling this a festival at all. Festival's awards Alejandro Amenàbar's Mar adentro (Sea Inside) won Best Film at the 21st Alexandria International Film Festival as well as Best Screenplay for Alejandro Amenàbar and Mateo Gil and Best Actor for Javier Bardem (it will be screened today 7.30pm at Cervantes Institute, Dokki). The Algerian Tahiya Al-Jazaer (Long Live Algeria) won Best Second Work for its director Nadir Moknéche, and Best Actress for Nadia Kassi. The French Rois et Reine (Kings and Queen) won Best Director for Arnaud Desplechin and shared the Best Technical Achievement for its editing with the Greek Pantelis Voulgaris's Brides. The Egyptian film Malik wa Kitaba (Head and Tail) won the International Critics Award. The awards were announced in ceremony Tuesday night.
