Palestinian film is top of the bill at this week's Sixth Biennale of Arab Cinemas in Paris, writes David Tresilian Click to view caption The Institut du Monde Arabe on the left bank of the Seine in Paris played host this week to a Sixth Biennale of Arab Cinemas, which this year brings together over 100 films from across the Arab world divided into three main sections: films in competition, including full-length features, short films and documentaries, a retrospective of Palestinian film from 1993 to 2002 and a section mounted in homage to the late Egyptian actress Soad Hosni, who died in London last year. Taking place this year in three locations across Paris, as well as in a reduced form in Marseilles, the biennale is now one of the world's main venues for Arab film, allowing French and European audiences a chance to see work that they would otherwise have little, if any, opportunity to see. Egyptian actor Nour El-Sherif is president of the jury for the feature-film section of the competition, with Egyptian films being well represented throughout the biennale. Among those in competition are Al- Sahir, Nadhariyat Al-Bahga (The Magician, or a Theory of Joy) directed by the late Radwan El- Kashef, remembered on these pages on 13 June, Asrar Al-Banat (Girls' Secrets) directed by Magdi Ahmed Ali, Dhail Al-Samaka (Fish Tail) directed by Samir Seif and Muwatin wa Mukhbir wa Harami (A Citizen, an Informer and a Thief) by Dawoud Abdel- Sayed, competing against films from Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia, among other countries. Two films by young Egyptian directors are in competition in the short films section of the biennale. Lili, adapted from a short story by Youssef Idris and directed by Marwan Hamed, is the story of Abdel- Aal, a preacher in a mosque whose life changes with the appearance of the beautiful Lili. Ru'ya (Vision), directed by Nadine Khan, is a study of the relationship between a middle-aged woman and her mother, as seen through the eyes of an observant neighbour. The biennale's documentary competition, divided into longer and shorter films, includes Mohamed Kamel El-Qalyoubi's Usturat Rose El-Youssef (The Legend of Rose El-Youssef), a portrait of the early 20th-century Egyptian journalist, feminist and writer whose legend lives on as the title of the Cairo weekly magazine, and 'Ashiqat Al-Sinima (Film Fans), Marianne Khoury's original look at the lives of the actresses who made their names in early Egyptian film, often against considerable social disapproval, including women such as Aziza Amir, Fatma Rushdi, Bahija Hafez, Amina Mohamed, Assia and Marie Queenie. Mustafa Hasnaoui's Al-Qahira, Al-Umm wal-Ibn (Cairo: Mother and Son) is a Tunisian director's look at contemporary Egypt through the differences between a mother and her son. The Paris Biennale of Arab Cinemas was first held in 1992, one year before the signing of the Oslo Accords that set up the Palestinian Authority, and 10 years on the organisers of this year's edition have decided to mark the event by holding a retrospective of Palestinian film. According to Michhet Krifa, co- ordinator of the biennale's Gros Plan sur la Palestine, this will allow Palestinian directors of feature films, short films, documentaries and video productions, whether from the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, from the Palestinian Diaspora, or from within the borders of Israel, an opportunity to reflect on the astonishing growth of Palestinian film production over the last 10 years. Writing in the biennale catalogue, which is available in Arabic and French, Krifa comments that "this tribute to recent Palestinian cinematic and audiovisual production is a reflection of Palestinian national resistance. Almost non-existent 10 years ago owing to a lack of infrastructure, the younger generation has now moved in to occupy the field of visual creativity, due to its vital need to express the reality of Palestinian life. To correct the images provided of Palestine by foreign television, these young people have decided to produce their own images of a region sometimes called 'the most mediatised of the planet'." The biennale's Palestine section is divided into films, documentaries and interviews with leading figures from Palestinian life. There is a welcome opportunity to see again Elia Suleiman's 1996 film Siggil Ikhtifa' (Story of a Disappearance), as well as Michel Khleifi's Hekayat Al-Gawahir Al-Thalath (The Tale of The Three Jewels, 1995), the story of 12-year-old Youssef, a child of the Intifada, who must find three lost jewels to win the affections of his childhood sweetheart, Aida. Among the nine films included in the shorter films section, Yawmiyat Ba'e'at Al-Hawa (A Prostitute's Diary), is a film about sexual exploitation, and Wa Marra Ukhra (Once Again) consists of five short pieces made by directors from Ramallah, Jerusalem, Gaza, Um Al- Fahm and Nazareth tracing the everyday lives of Palestinians caught up in the conflict in the occupied territories and in Gaza. The large number of Palestinian documentary films at the biennale is striking, including films by some 20 Palestinian directors often made as Palestinian-French, British and Belgian co-productions. In the "Palestinian figures" section, there are portraits of well-known Palestinian public figures such as the politician Hanan Ashrawi (Hanan Ashrawi: Imra'a fi Zaman Al-Tahaddi; Hanan Ashrawi: Woman of Her Time, dir Mai Masri, 1995), poets Mahmoud Darwish (Mahmoud Darwish: Al-Ard Kal-Lugha; Mahmoud Darwish: The Land, like the Language, dir Simone Bitton, 1998) and Fadwa Tuqan (Fadwa: Sha'ira min Filastin; Fadwa: Poet from Palestine, dir Liana Badr, 1999), academic, journalist and political commentator Edward Said (Edward Said, dir Walid Mahmoud, 2001) and the late cartoonist Naji Al-Ali (Naji Al-Ali, Fanan Dhu Ru'ya; Naji Al-Ali, Visionary Artist, dir Kasim Abid, 1998). Perhaps, as Krifa comments in her catalogue article, this flourishing of documentary film, often made by young directors and drawing on the resources of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation set up in co-operation with France Télévision and having offices in Gaza and Ramallah, is a result of such directors "taking up the camera to explore questions of national identity". Thus, she continues, these films play a vital role, since they present alternative views of Palestinian society and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has become "the most telegenic in the world, television having distorted local reality through an 'information-overdose'. This has left a series of stereotypes in viewers' minds -- the child martyr, the suicide-bomber, the stone-thrower, the mother-in- tears -- mixing images together in order to produce a spectacle of human misery... and making the Palestinians themselves the spectators of their own history". These films offer different, more subtle views of Palestinian society, while also presenting prominent figures from Palestinian civil society to a wider audience and often taking the televising of the conflict as a theme, as, for example, in Azza Al-Hassan's documentary Zaman Al-Akhbar (News Time). Finally, the biennale includes special showings of seven films from the career of Egyptian actress Soad Hosni, born in 1942 and becoming in the 1960s and 1970s a favourite star of Egyptian and Arab audiences before her tragic death last year. Among the films on show at the biennale are various Hosni vehicles, including Salah Abu Seif's Al- Qahira Talatin (Cairo 1930, 1966), Youssef Chahine's Al-Ikhtiyar (The Choice, 1971) and Ali Badrakhan's Al-Gou' (Hunger, 1986), an adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz's novel Al-Harafish, in which Hosni plays the role of a rich woman in a popular district of Cairo at the end of the 19th century. The biennale catalogue also contains a full filmography of Hosni's work and a series of critical essays. Inevitably, Egypt, as the largest producer of Arabic-language film, video and television, is amply represented at the biennale, with Egyptian directors and film-industry professionals being on hand to address the French public at a series of specially organised colloquia to run in parallel with screenings of their work. However, it is fitting, too, that the biennale should take place in Paris, since France has long been the most important European supporter of Egyptian and Arab film, particularly through Franco-Egyptian co-productions made by Youssef Chahine's Misr Film Company and produced by Humbert Balsan. This year there were six Franco- Arab co-productions at the Cannes Film Festival made in collaboration either with French agencies such as the Centre National de la Cinématographie and L'Agence Intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, whose secretary-general is the former secretary-general of the United Nations and Egyptian secretary of state for foreign affairs, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or with French or Franco-German television companies such as Canal+ and Arte. Such films have included major works of Arab cinema, such as Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte (Farewell Bonaparte) and Elia Suleiman's Intervention divine (Divine Intervention), shown this year at Cannes. To commemorate 70 years of Franco-Egyptian co-operation, at this year's Paris biennale a special showing has been arranged of Unshudat Al-Fu'ad (The Heart's Song), the first Egyptian "talkie" made in 1932 by Studios Nahas Sphinx in Cairo and Studios Eclair in Paris and now restored by the Cinémathèque Française. According to Catherine Arnaud, co-ordinator of the colloquia organised between Arab and French filmmakers at the biennale, this history of Franco-Arab, Franco-Egyptian and Euro-Arab and Egyptian co- operation is part of a French desire to be an "exception culturelle", a cultural exception, in a film- industry otherwise dominated by the techno-violence and sterilised sexual imagery of Hollywood. It is to be hoped, she says, that the biennale, now in its 10th year, together with the successes of Franco- Arab film production over the past 20 years in particular, will lead to further Euro-Arab dialogue and future successful film production. 6ème Biennale des Cinémas Arabes à Paris, 29 June -- 7 July 2002, Institut du Monde Arabe, 1, rue des Fossés Saint-Bernard, Paris Feature films in competition Khalf Gibal Tariq (Beyond Gibraltar), Morocco/Turkey/ Belgium (2001), dir Taylan Barman & Mourad Boucif; Qamaran wa Zaitouna (Two Moons and an Olive Tree), Syria (2001), dir Abdellatif Abdel-Hamid; Heremakono (fi Intidhar Al-Sa'ada) (Heremakono, or Waiting for Happiness), Mauritania/France (2002), dir Abderrahmane Sissako; Ughniyat Al-Na'ouya (Noria's Song), Tunisia/France (2002), dir Abdellatif Ben Ammar; Mausim Al-Zaitoun (Olive Harvest), Palestine/USA (2002), dir Hanna Elias; Al-Sahir, Nadhariyat Al-Bahga (The Magician, or a Theory of Joy), Egypt (2001), dir Radwan El-Kashef; Al-Quds fi Yawm Akhir (Rana's Marriage), Palestine/Netherlands (2002), dir Hany Abu Ass'ad; Mona Saber, Morocco (2001), dir Abdelhai Laraki; Lamma Hakiyat Maryam (When Mariam Unveils), Lebanon (2001), dir Assad Fouladkar; Dhail Al-Samaka (Fish Tail), Egypt (2001), dir Samir Seif; Rachida, Algeria/France (2002), dir Yamina Bachir-Chouikh; Sunduq Al-Dunya (Sacrifices), Syria/France (2002), dir Ossama Mohamed; Asrar Al-Banat (Girls' Secrets), Egypt (2001), dir Magdi Ahmed Ali; Al-Ard Al-Mag'hula (Terra Incognita), Lebanon/France (2002), dir Ghassan Salhab; Muwatin wa Mukhbir wa Harami (A Citizen, an Informer and a Thief), Egypt (2001), dir Dawoud Abdel-Sayed; Al-Raghba (Desire), Egypt (2001), dir Ali Badrakhan; Tadhkara Ila Al-Quds (Ticket to Jerusalem), Palestine/Netherlands (2002), dir Rashid Maaharawi Gros Plan sur la Palestine Features: Hikayat Al-Gawahir Al-Thalath (Tale of The Three Jewels), Palestine/Belgium/Great Britain (1995), dir Michel Khleifi; Haifa, Palestine/Netherlands/France (1995), dir Rachid Masharawi; Sigill Ikhtifa' (Story of a Disappearance), Palestine/France (1996), dir Elias Suleiman; Darb Al-Tabbanat (The Milky Way), Palestine (1997), dir Ali Nassar Short films: Al-Hilm Al-Arabi (Arab Dream), Palestine/France (1998), dir Elia Suleiman; Cyber Falasteen (Cyber Palestine), Palestine (2001), dir Elia Suleiman; Arba' Aghanayat Li-Falasteen (Four Songs for Palestine), Palestine (2001), dir Nada Al- Yassir; Maqloubé (Maqlobé), Palestine (2000), dir Rachid Masharawi; Sayadi Al-Satellite (Satellite-dish Hunters), Palestine/USA (2001), dir Annemarie Jecir Quatan; Youmiyat Ba'e'at Al-Hawa (A Prostitute's Diary), Palestine (2001), dir Tawfik Abu-Wael; Ofoul Al-qamar (The Moon Sets), Palestine (2001), dir Ahmed Habbash; Wekalat Safar (Travel Agency), Palestine/Austria (2001), dir Nabila Irshad; Wa Marra Ukhra (Once Again), Palestine (2001), dir Ismail Habash, Nada Al-Yassir, Tawfiq Abu-Wael, Najwa Najjar, Abdel Salem Shehadeh
