Hani Mustafa balances commercial and independent As the year comes to an end, the same question pops up in the minds of critics: What has been achieved in the field of cinema in Egypt? It is first and foremost a confusing question, because between subjective artistic evaluation and level-headed commercial calculations, it is all but impossible to say anything. Yet if we take into account films produced in the period January-December 2010 as opposed to films commercially screened in the same period, it becomes clear that, while some of the best fare was awarded numerous prizes at festivals around the world, that fare has on the whole not yet been screened to the general public. Many art films of 2009 were not screened until 2010 because they could not be shown prior to their tour of the festivals. It is a complex process that does not always work very smoothly. First the film participates in international and regional festivals, where it is distributed outside Egypt. Then, on coming back, it must contend with the problems of local distribution -- questions of time of the year, for example -- and even then it can hardly compete with commercial films, which benefit from effective publicity machines and often from the presence in their casts of box office grossing starts. For commercial films the process is much simpler, even though the business of generating a large viewer base and how to attract people to a particular film or a particular kind of film has its own complications. Following its return to film production, the Ministry of Culture peaked in 2009 when it contributed to the production of a range of films by some of the country's most serious filmmakers: Rasael Al-Bahr (Messages of the Sea) by Dawoud Abdel-Sayed. Bel Alwan Al-Tabi'ya (In Natural Colours) by Osama Fawzi and Asafir Al-Nil (Birds of the Nile) by Magdi Ahmed Ali; it covered the production of Ahmed (The Traveller) fully. A 2009 production, Al Musafir -- which was on the point of having a public screening several times, only to be perpetually postponed -- is now scheduled for March 2011. So much for the Ministry of Culture. If 2009 was the year of the ministry, then 2010 was the year of independent and low-budget film, with Ahmed Abdallah's Microphone, Ibrahim El-Batout's Hawi (Sorcerer) and Tamer Ezzat's Al-Tariq Al-Da'ery (The Ring Road) topping the bill. Ahmed Rashwan's Basra, which won the best script award in the Arab Contest of the 2009 Cairo International Film Festival but its screening was delayed for two years for an entirely different kind of reason -- Rashwan could not find a producer who would fund the conversion of the film to 35mm format until Gabi Khouri, a major figure in the Chahine clan, agreed to do it; and it was screened on Eid Al-Adha last year for a brief time in two theatres only, which is the plight of most low-budget films. Yet 2010 remains one of the best years for Egyptian cinema: Al-Musafir received the Rabat International Film Festival jury award; Hawi received the first award at the Tribeca Film Festival in Doha; and Microphone received the Golden Tanit at the Carthage Film Festival as well as the first award in the Cairo International Film Festival Arab Contest; the actor Asser Yassin received the best actor award for his role in Dawoud Abdel-Sayed's Rasael Al-Bahr at Carthage. At the same time, the economic meltdown certainly made a negative impact on production companies like Good News (which produced no films in 2010), whose huge-budget, multi-star productions like Leilet Al-Baby Doll (The Baby Doll Night), directed by Adel Adib, and Marwan Hamed's Ibrahim Al-Abyad, no doubt contributed to its current financial weakness. Comedy still rules and it is interesting to note that at least one star comedian was completely absent from the screen in 2010: the comedian Mohamed Heneidi's last film was Amir Al-Behar (Prince of the Sea) produced in 2009. Yet, with two films by Khaled Marei -- Assal Eswed (Molasses) and Bolbol Hayran (Bolbol Perplexed) -- for his fellow comedian Ahmed Helmi, 2010 was crucial. Helmi clearly plans to replace Heneidi and Mohammad Saad as the leading young comedian. For his part Saad presented a third reincarnation of El-Limby (the character that made his name) in Ashraf Fayek's El-Limby 8 Giga ; his last two films, Karkar (2007) and Boushkash (2008), had not grossed as much as expected, and 2009 went by without a film in which he starred. Egypt's number one comedian Adel Imam, on the other hand -- a position he has held unchallenged for three decades -- reasserted his position with Zahaymer (Alzheimer's), directed by Amr Arafa. Imam's moon was waning since the dawn of the 21st century, perhaps because he settled for weak films -- films Hello America, Amir Al-Zalam (Prince of Darkness), Hassan wi Morcos (Hassan and Morcos) and Bobous -- in order to stay in the arena with at least one film a year. But he closed the decade with something delightful. Most interesting is how some cinematic forms triumph while others lose out in the course of a year. Let us hope the ministry continues to support the film industry; let us hope independent films manage to have greater presence.
