Mohamed Khan's latest film, Klephty, has not secured a general release. But it attracted large audiences for its two Cairo screenings. Mohamed El-Assyouti attended Everybody is a thief, or that would seem to be the drift of Klephty, director Mohamed Khan's latest effort, which has yet to secure a general release. The plot follows an unnamed protagonist -- labelled a "klephty" by the police, a word which, Khan explains, derives from the Greek klépht (thief) and has been appropriated locally and applied to petty crooks, occupants of a world in which the bigger eats the smaller fish. Occasional backdrops, with images of George Bush on TV screens and radio news reports on the situation in Iraq, seem to be intended to universalise the film's theme -- that Cairo is part of a wider world where the bigger thief of Florida eats the smaller thief of Baghdad. In Khan's Faris Al-Madina (Chevalier of the City, 1990), Faris, the protagonist, tells one of his business partners that "we all have our hands in each other's pockets". It is a theme that the director expands on in Klephty, a film which its director says is about "Shaabi people and the crooked world we live in, whether we like it or not." "In any society facing economic pressures," Khan says, "people compromise their integrity, though they do not lose it entirely. They cheat on their wives, in paying a bill, in other things. I think that, without preaching, this film mirrors much of what is happening in Cairo. I can already hear the audience saying: 'Oh! What do you mean? We're not all thieves!' But then again, maybe we all are." Klephty revisits, thematically and stylistically, some of Khan's long running concerns. The protagonist is a variation on Faris (literally, chevalier or knight), from the trilogy Taer Ala Al-Tariq (Bird on the Road, 1981), Al-Harif (Street Player, 1983) and Faris Al-Madina (Chevalier of the City, 1990). Faris, who struggles to maintain his integrity, appears to be fighting a losing battle: holding onto a code of values in a world that, Khan seems to imply, is unjust and immoral, is no easy task. In Taer money triumphs over love; in Al-Harif, fairplay leads to loss, swindling to survival, and in Faris the only way to keep your hands clean is to exit the world of business. Klephty was financed by its director and produced on a shoe string budget with no stars. It is, in many ways, a very personal film. "Right now I believe that a film is like a book, if you write it and it is good enough it will eventually be read," says Khan. Though the equipment was basic -- a 3CCP Sony VX9000 digital video camera and DAT sound recording machine -- Khan still exceeded his budget. "Filming on digital video, with the principal cast and crew members working on a deferred compensation basis, should have meant less financial stress," he says. Yet still Khan was dependent on foreign funding for post-production costs. A limited production crew -- on average 10 members, who could squeeze with camera and equipment on to a microbus -- lent mobility in Downtown's crowded streets and more control over exterior locations, significant given that 90 per cent of the events of Klephty, as in most of Khan's films, take place in the streets of Cairo -- Shubra, Heliopolis, Maadi, Madinat Nasr, Mohandessin, Downtown, Al-Haram and the Cairo-Fayoum Road. But Khan believes that Klephty marks his farewell to the city. "I think in the future I'd rather shoot more relaxed films. I'm over 60 now and I shouldn't overdo it. Filming in crowded places is too physically exhausting." With no advance advertising both screenings of Klephty at the Opera Creativity Centre were packed, with the audience sitting on the floor, others standing, while those who arrived ten minutes or so before the show were unable to get in. Khan, who has directed only one film during the last decade, clearly has some pulling power. The director's most prolific period was in the 1980s and early 1990s, during which he made 15 films, five of them starring Ahmed Zaki. Klephty though, features the relatively unknown Basem Samra, Rola Mahmoud and Ahmed Kamal, together with cameos from scriptwriter Tamer Habib, cinematographer Islam Abdel-Sami', production designer Mohamed Attiya, film directors Khairi Bishara, Ahmed Rashwan, Sherif El-Azma and Kamla Abu Zekri, as well as Mohamed Khan himself. Its end credits dedicate the film to "the memory of Sami El-Salamoni, Samir Nasri and Atef El-Tayeb, friends who departed before sharing with me the digital video filmmaking experience". Khan does not mince words when speaking about his relationship with the mainstream distribution system that has effectively marginalised him in the recent years. After his unsuccessful attempt to make Nisma fi Mahab Al-Rih (Nisma in the Eye of the Storm), he planned to shoot Klephty, which he co-scripted with Mohamed Nasser Ali, on digital video, hoping to later secure the funding to transfer it to cinema. After completing the film the collapse of the Egyptian pound had made the idea of transfer too costly given that the film's absence of any stars severely limits its appeal to local distributors. He is now exploring the possibility of releasing the film directly on satellite TV channels. But his faith in digital filming does not appear to have been shaken by the non-release of Klephty. In a brief statement before the show he insisted digital was the only real future for independent cinema. Khan's brand of street filming depends on stolen shots, on people going about their ordinary lives becoming part of the backdrop and texture of the film. But although Klephty takes place in the same Cairo that has been dominant physical presence in the majority of Khan's 19 films, this time around the pictorial mood is different. The film, Khan says, is "docudramatic". The hand-held digital video opened up possibilities that are not available to 35mm. "I didn't want a polished look. The rough edges in the picture are my way of adapting to the new medium, of using its limitations as well as its capacities," Khan remarks. " Klephty harks back, not in content but in its experimental style, to something like John Cassavetes's Shadows. Cassavetes was the father of independence, though I don't think I am influenced by him. But he is an inspiration." The klephty is similar to the Faris protagonists in not being over-ambitious. He is a confidence trickster of last resort, a thief simply to survive. He is malice-free; during a burglary he realises his partner is strangling a child, punches him and locks him up after removing the child from the flat. His escape from the crime scene is captured in a series of travelling shots, a replica of the scene in Ahlam Hind wa Camilia (Dreams of Hind and Camilia, 1987), in which the maid Hind escapes after realising her boyfriend, Eid, and his cousin were robbing the house she worked in. Here the thief is really a version of Eid, played by Ahmed Zaki. Both were originally street children: lacking even the petit bourgeois or working class up- bringing of the Faris protagonists, they rob and swindle because they have not learned how to do anything else. Both try to avoid marrying their girlfriends though in Klephty it is the girlfriend, true to femme fatale convention, who manages to swindle the street-wise protagonist. Like other Khan protagonists, the klephty is clear about what he will not do. What he is willing to do, however, is not so clear. From a homeless child sleeping in deserted buildings, not knowing when "stray dogs will come to bite him", Khan's protagonist becomes a streetwise con-artist. After his journey through infernal Cairo, culminating in a few months imprisonment and loss of his love interest, he leaves the big city for the first time. He works at a tourist resort, but still tries to play tricks on tourists, convincing them he can walk on water. As the benches he walks on give way his white clad figure sinks. He smiles as the water reaches his neck, then mouth, and on this image of drowning and smiling the film closes. The fate of the klephty, perhaps like that of Khan himself, is to remain trapped between the devil of the city and the deep blue sea.
