Back from France, filmmaker Saad Hendawy, a member of the 27th Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival jury, reviews the event's award winners The city of Clermont Ferrand had been covered in a uniform whiteness, but gradually the warm winter sun melted the snow -- a warmth reflected in the eagerness of film lovers to attend this annual festival (28 January to 5 February). And for nine days filmmakers from France, Italy, Spain, India, the US, Egypt, Japan, Taiwan conducted an engaging dialogue in the language of short film. The 17th round of the festival to include films from outside France, and the fourth to provide for the Labo competition for innovative ideas in content or form, the event showcased 77 films in the international and 59 in the local competition as well as 39 Labo candidates. Films were screened in a total of 13 theatres, with special programmes dedicated to Norway, Spain, Africa, the Israeli Sam Spiegel University, boxing and children's cinema. Egyptian presence in the international competition was limited to Tamer El-Said's seven-minute film Yom Al- Ithnain (Monday). It is working on the various stages of execution that makes filmmaking a joyful experience, El-Said said: "All I thought about was how to make a short film with the lowest possible budget, liberating myself from the obstacles associated with production. I was fortunate enough to find an idea that suited my intentions and made it possible to shoot in a few hours with a very small crew, thanks also to help from my friends; the cameraman provided equipment and tapes for free, the actors performed gratis and the shooting took place in a friend's apartment. The budget, spent almost wholly on the editing, did not exceed LE1,000." Its artistic value notwithstanding, the film sheds light on the possibilities of digital video, which El-Said sees as appropriate for certain kinds of ideas and aesthetics: "It is a medium more suited to the intimate and the personal details of daily life, which fit in with the home video aesthetic. Yom Al-Ithnain," he recounts, "is about a little incident narrated by both husband and wife; an unusual day within a mundane existence. They are a couple but each of them needed to celebrate his/her own idiosyncrasies, and when each manages to achieve an extremely special moment, he/she feels that life is different and thereby becomes capable of giving happiness to the other." Awards went to films with very low budgets which have a profound intellectual import or employ a novel style. Mexican filmmaker Enrique Arroyo's El Otro sueño americano (The Other American Dream), which won the international competition, is a 10-minute film executed in a single take. It focusses on Sandra, a very young woman on her way to being handed over to her American purchasers to be forced into prostitution, in a car driving north. The film ends with a statement on the annual number of young Mexicans who either disappear or are killed in this late-in-the-day slave trade. The special jury prize went to the Ukranian filmmaker Valentin Vasyanovych's Against the Course of the Sun, a 20- minute documentary about an innovative mud sculptor. Both the audience and the "laughter" awards went to Belgian filmmaker Micha Wald's Alice et Moi (Alice and Me), a 19- minute comedy about a young man who has the misfortune of arguing with his girlfriend over the phone while driving his aunt and her friend to the beach, with the result that the old women interfere. The film acquires a political dimension as the young man confronts his aunt: it is Israelis, not Arabs, who practise terrorism. It is but an example of the many ways in which it shows the difference in viewpoints within a single Jewish family: fanaticism vs youth. The press award went to the French film La peur, petit chasseur (Fear, a Little Hunter), a nine-minute film shot from a fixed camera position. A little boy, worried and sad, is sitting outside a house: he knocks on the door, he looks through the window, he calls for his mother -- in vain. Much later the mother steps out and starts to hang clothes to dry without paying any attention to him. Then suddenly a man's voice is heard inside, in response to which the mother rushes back in. Shouting is heard, then the sound of furniture breaking. A little later the mother steps out again, she goes on hanging the washing, again not even looking at the child. La peur, petit chasseur also won the grand prix of the local competition, in which the special jury award went to Brahim Fritah's La femme seul (The Woman Alone), the audience award to Kamel Cherif's Signe d'appartenance (A Sign of Belonging), the FNAC award to the Lebanese-French production (Beyrouth, Après-Rasage) by Hany Tamba, the Canal+ award to David Fauche's Nicole et Daniel and the best animated film award to Arnaud Demuynck's Signes de Vie (Signs of Life).
