Interviewed by Hani Mustafa "There have been many achievements. We now have a CD rom which has information about participants and honorees alongside pages on Egypt and its tourist sites. It was important for us that festival guests should have all the necessary information about Egypt and to employ the latest technological means to make this information available. This is the first time the festival has offered this service. For the first time, too, a magazine in colour devoted to the festival, Panorama, has been published. "We have also organised an exhibition of cinema equipment which lasted for four days. In the first two days of the exhibition equipment worth LE3 million was sold -- far beyond what I expected. The chairman of the Berlin Fair Festival attended this event and we have a reached an agreement with him to hold a much bigger exhibition during next year's festival. "Regarding the festival itself, for the first time we announced the names of jury members 25 days before the beginning of the festival. We also added special sections to the festival such as the panorama of Iranian cinema and screened films to honour Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and the Taviani brothers. "My goal is that the Cairo film festival will eventually become one of the top four film festivals in the world, alongside Cannes, Venice and Berlin. I am hoping that this goal will be reached in the year 2002. And I don't feel that we lack any of the requirements needed to achieve this goal. "But this will not happen until directors have faith in the festival and in its artistic standards. Increasing such faith by raising standards is now a major goal. And we were able to attract 36 companies to the cinema equipment exhibition, which was on the margins of the festival, even though we really did not have much credibility with them. We also had a strong jury committee, headed by John Malkovich, something that can only enhance our international profile. "We have also succeeded in attracting business sponsorship, some providing cash, others sponsoring in kind. We have the most important cinema industry in the region, and this is an important foundation of our aim to become an important festival on the international scene. Such opening up, though, will not be pursued regardless. It remains inconceivable, for example, that there will be Israeli participation in the festival. "Of course, every event of this size has drawbacks but believe me they have been far fewer this year. A film was delayed for half an hour in the airport and they asked me should the one following it in the official competition be screened. I said no, not even if we have to wait till the end of the night for it. "One thing that I see as extremely important is the kind and quality of the films we are showing, something nobody has discussed in the papers. I know that some of the people on the street are saying that the films are very bad this year and I know the reason -- it is because there are less explicit sex scenes than during previous festivals. In the past few years we lost credibility as a festival, with people saying we show films because they have steamy scenes in them, regardless of their artistic value. Now we are trying to elevate taste. If the cinema theatres are not so full this year, next year they will be fuller, and the year after more so. I am an artist and an intellectual and it is my duty to culturally educate the public." photo: Adel Ahmed
