Scanning the local multiplexes and news of Egyptian filmmakers, Mohamed El-Assyouti brings the cinematic year to an abrupt close The first movie season is the Big Eid, always. And 2004 was no exception, apart from the fact that there was precious little to experience in the way of absorbing cinema. The biggest box office grosses went to another star-centred comedy, Sai'e Bahr (Sea Tramp), with Ahmed Helmi (who supported the late Alaa Walieddin) doing the honours all by himself. Written by Bilal Fadl and directed by Ali Ragab, it is another film about the unemployed young, an increasingly clichéd theme of the so called new comedy, the most commercially viable genre in the last decade: nothing easier than throwing a clueless, jobless character or two into a string of funny situations when you have invented a reason for them to need money. By the time the Small Eid took over from Ramadan, however, signalling the start of the last season in the year, it was social drama, not new comedy that came out on top, with Saad Hendawy's Halit Hobb (A State of Love or In Love) drawing the largest numbers. A commercial success from outside the predominant genre, at last: Hani Khalifa's Sahar Al- Layali (Wakeful Nights) had evidently set an example. The story of two brothers separated in childhood, Halit Hobb compares two attitudes to issues of identity, family and art -- the one brother having grown up in Cairo, the other in Paris -- and stars a host of talented young actors: Hani Salama, Hend Sabri, Tamer Hosni and Sherif Ramzi. With 2004 named the year of Italian-Egyptian cultural cooperation, the intervening months provided for much Italian fare. There occurred Italian film weeks in January and June, and a special guest programme during the 28th Cairo Film Festival, with 45 Italian films spanning the last 60 years screened in the course of the latter event alone. Italian filmmaker Pupi Avati's presence in Cairo, during the first week of the festival, contributed to the closeness of Italy for many movie lovers. For a while in midsummer, Osama Fawzi's Bahib Al-Sima (I Love Cinema) was all the rage. It drastically divided critics as to its worth and appeal, generating wide-ranging debates in and beyond the milieu. A semi-autobiographical account of the childhood of the scriptwriter, Hani Fawzi, the film tells of a six-year-old movie buff's conflict with a devout father who, identifying art with sin, will allow him no cinema at all. So obsessively devout is that father he also abstains from conjugal relations with his wife now intercourse has performed its function of giving them children; and the controversy generated by the film had as much to do with the two Fawzis' harsh critique of the religious life as with aesthetic and intellectual considerations. Its release was inordinately delayed; years after its completion the opening credits still had to be preceded by an official note thanking the Coptic Church for its open-minded and tolerant attitude in allowing the screening -- for the censor had transferred the issue to the clergy -- a "return to the Middle Ages", in the view of some. Yet it was Coptic censure -- add to a string of censorial trials and the hostile stance of relatively secular journalists -- that brought Bahib Al-Sima to the limelight. Nor did its passable commercial success improve the director's spirits after the long wait. It only received the most limited attention, and to this day its detractors are so impassioned one wonders if they would like to burn the negatives. One irony the religiously minded audience fails to see is that the father character believes that it is sinful to make or watch films irrespective of content; their campaign should really target the industry as a whole. The only film about Copts to have been made in many, many years without the benefit of a government, propaganda-minded commission, Bahib Al-Sima remains one of Egyptian cinema's better recent achievements. Yet it is probably Yousry Nasrallah's Bab Al- Shams (Gate of the Sun), screened in the course of the 57th Cannes Film Festival (official selection out of competition section) that makes up the highlight of Egyptian cinema in 2004. A four-and-a-half-- hour-long national epic depicting 50 years of Palestinian struggle, on 27 December Richard Corliss of Time magazine named it one the best ten films of the year, writing "it's as verdant and oneiric, as pulsing and plot-thick as a [Gabriel] Garc�a Màrquez parable with enough action, passion and gorgeous people to satisfy any mall moviegoer." ( Bab Al-Shams is to be released in Cairo this January). As the summer wore on the screens were once again overtaken by comedy superstar vehicles, the only genre that seems to make money these days -- something to which the fierce competition testified. Veteran Adel Imam once again played a father in Aris min Giha Amniya (A Husband from State Security), a kind of remake of Father of the Bride, benefiting no less from the innovation of director Ali Idris than from the talents of the (relatively) young: Sherif Mounir and Hala Shiha. Mohamed Saad of Al-Limbi fame, currently the biggest grossing comedian, came back with a single offering in which he played two entirely different roles ( Okal ): his continued collaboration with scriptwriter Sameh Sirel-Khitm betrays good (financial) thinking. With Fuul Al-Sin Al-Azim (The Great Fuul of China), a comedy meant to work equally as a Crouching Tiger -style action flick and shot largely in China, Mohamed Heneidi, the short man of new comedy, played the lead in a Sherif Arafa film for the first time since his rise to fame. Similarly, though without the same stress on comedy, the action hero Ahmed El- Saqqa vehicle Tito, made by Tareq El-Eryan, tried to bring Hollywood excitement to the local multiplexes. Both relied on imported crews to give the films a polished, "foreign" feel. So too did Sherif Sabri, the famous advertisement and video clip producer-director, in an extended music video made for the music starlet Rubi, Saba' Waraqat Kotshina (Seven Playing Cards), though without sufficient attention to the filmmaking aspect of the endeavour -- his directorial debut on the silver -- Sabri made a huge mess of it, what with both the critics and the box office testifying to its complete failure. Youssef Chahine paid more attention to Iskendriya-New York (Alexandria-New York), an event by virtue of the fact that it is the latest by its maker if for no other reason -- the event, in fact, of September. The long delayed fourth instalment of the auteur's ongoing autobiographical project -- Iskenderiya Leih, Hadouta Masriya, Iskenderiya Kaman we Kaman (Alexandria, Why? An Egyptian Story, Alexandria, Again and Again) -- the film, with its glaring political overtones, melodramatic action and indiscriminate eagerness to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, bears more affinity to recent films like Al-Aakhar (The Other) and Sukkout Hansawwar (Silence, Shooting) than to its three groundbreaking predecessors. Introducing promising new actors, as is Chahine's wont, the film did demonstrate the septuagenarian's ability to compete in a market dominated by comedy and the young -- testimony to his 55 years in the industry. Shot digitally, filmmaker Mohamed Khan's pet project Klephty had a handful of special screenings at about the same time, with mixed reactions. It remains important in that it is a senior filmmaker's attempt to carve a niche for independent low- budget filmmaking, however -- an experiment to be tested in the next few years. A mean-street-type action film that can be seen in the context of the director's street-oriented project, it has no stars and was shot on location with minimal intervention in some of Cairo's most crowded neighbourhoods. It has yet to air in a major movie house. Much earlier in the year Ahla Al-Awqat (The Best Times), the work of a new team made up of scriptwriter Wisam Suleiman and filmmaker Hala Khalil, promised a positive counterpoint to the sensationalism of the supposedly feminist filmmaker Inas El-Degheidi's Al-Bahithat an Al-Hurriya (Freedom Seekers), starring three female actresses from three different Arab countries, which opened to the disappointment of both audience and critics at the last Cairo film festival. A far less pretentious affair, Ahla Al-Awqat, which also stars three women, is simply a film made by and for women. At least it points to the possibility, in film, of a feminism free from the kind of flash-in-the-pan attractions El-Degheidi has always endeavoured to include in her work. Now another Big Eid beacons, film lovers can only indulge the winter spirit and wait hopefully for another year of Egyptian cinema, crossing their fingers the while.
