Made in China Celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival, which coincides with the Year of the Dragon, the Chinese Embassy in Cairo gave a fascinating celebration at El Sawy Culturewheel River Hall in Zamalek, which started at 3pm and lasted until 8pm. It featured, as well as the dragon show, live traditional music, a Chinese book fair and an origami workshop. The festival attracted some 2,000 people, both Egyptian and Chinese, also featured a Chinese calligraphy artist who inscribed the names of participants in Chinese characters on paper cards. Ayman Barayez was there with his camera. photo: Abdel-Hamid Eid The National Council of Human Rights (NCHR), headed by Boutros Ghali, held a giant celebration at the Safir Hotel in Dokki to hand out awards for a special drama production on the topic human rights -- part of an attempt to promote the culture of human rights across social classes. The awards were distributed by the veteran comedian Mohamed Sobhi, cinema critics Rafiq El-Sabban and Tarek El-Shennawi -- and they went to producer Gabi Khouri, actors Mohamed Ramadan and Hani Adel from the cast of the TV series Dawaran Shubra, as well as the cast of the television series Al-Mouwaten X (Citizen X), actors Eiad Nassar, Sherry Adel and the cast of the TV series Ragol Men Hatha Al-Zaman (A Man of This Age). Also honoured were director Enaam Mohamed Ali, actors Ahmed Shaker, Hanna Shiha, Nahla Salama and Heba Magdi. The ceremony featured the singer Riham Abdel-Hakim and the Ana Masri (I am Egyptian) band. Sobhi, who is a member of NCHR, gave the band members honorary shields, announcing that the band will be officially representing NCHR as of now. The cast of the recently released blockbuster Omar wa Salma 3 (Omar and Salma 3) attended the film's premiere at the Concorde Al-Salam Cinema in the absence of the media. Omar wa Salma, directed by Mohamed Sami and produced by Mohsen Gaber, stars singer-cum-actor Tamer Hosni and actress Maye Ezzeddin. Present at the premiere were actors Ahmed Zaher, Haggag Abdel-Azim, Randa El-Beheiri and Maged El-Masri. The Champollion Rotary Club (CRC), headed by Omar El-Geddawi, organised a seminar on the financial and economic state in Egypt after the 25 January Revolution. The keynote speaker of the seminar was chairman of the board of Bloom Bank Mohamed Ozaleb, who discussed the reasons behind the deteriorating economic state of Egypt, one of which is the lower rate of tourism. Members of the CRC present included Nahed Tadros, Anna Taraboulsi, Dina Mezawi, Sherine Rizouki, Magdi Mansour, Randa El-Laham as well as novelist and political activist Alaa El-Aswani. photos: Ayman Barayez On the occasion of World Tourism Day, an event at the Cairo International Conference Centre Menkara Hall saw Minister of Tourism Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour giving a speech in praise of the employees of the tourism sector, who tolerated the recent tough conditions due to drops in the number of tourists, promising them improvements in the near future. Abdel-Nour honoured a number of leading figures in the Tourism Ministry who have expended effort and expertise in the field; they included the former head of the Tourist Promotion Authority Adel Abdel-Aziz, the Ministry of Tourism Under-Secretary Abdel-Aziz El-Saleh as well as tourism experts Hossam El-Shaer, Lola Zaqlama, Afaf Abu Youssef, Salah Attia, Salah Abdel-Hakim Amer and Imtenan Sadek. To celebrate the announcement of the Al Mawred Al Thaqafy (Culture Resource) 2011 Production Award winners, a reception was held last Friday at Beit Al-Shaair (Al-Set Wassila) behind Al-Azhar Mosque. The Egyptian singer Fayrouz Karawiya won the production award in music; she was granted the award to shoot the first song of her first album, scheduled to be released next February. In her album, she collaborates with a number of gifted young songwriters and composers including Omar Taher, Ahmed Haddad, Amr Jahin and Nasreddin Nagui. The Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture (MACIC) in Cairo celebrated the World Hindi Day in the presence of the Indian Ambassador R Swaminathan and director of the MACIC Durai Swaminathan. Hindi, the official language of the Republic of India and the third most widely spoken language in the world, is spoken by a majority of Indians not only in India but all over the world. With the increasing popularity of Hindi films, Hindi has become familiar to many non-Indians as well. Since 2006, to spread the use of Hindi abroad, the World Hindi Day is celebrated by Indian embassies all over the world. Organised with active support from the Egypt-India Friendship Association and members of the Indian community in Egypt, the programme included speeches in Hindi, recitation of Hindi poetry, recounting of experiences, jokes as well as rendering of Hindi songs and Indian dance by Indians and Egyptians. Cairo-based artists are invited to apply to a two-week residency at the Townhouse Gallery downtown, taking place from 21 January until 5 February 2012. Ten artists will be selected to participate, working with a visiting group of former and current students of art, photography and image studies from France and Germany. Taking place during the period when Egypt will commemorate the one- year anniversary of its ongoing revolution, this residency is part of a wider project titled "Cairo -- Open City," which focuses on the roles of images of political and social change in Egypt as part of a broader historical movement in the Arab world. This project suggests that images have played a major role not only in documenting what has happened, but in constructing the world's conception of the change taking place in Egypt. "Cairo -- Open City" will culminate in an exhibition in Braunschweig, Germany, in June 2012. The Townhouse will provide a communal working space for the resident artists, where the group will meet, work, and attend a programme of talks by invited guests including professors, activists, artists, journalists and other contributors. Throughout the residency, the two groups of artists will rediscover Cairo together as they attempt to produce a statement on what is currently happening in Egypt. At the end of the workshop there will be no presentation of results -- experiences will be processed and communicated as part of the exhibition to be held the following summer. Works by all the participants will be shown in different stages of development -- works-in progress, sketches, impressions, notes. This process-related emphasis may be a way of reflecting the uncertain state of the ever-developing societal transformations that the artists should witness. The European Union Ambassador to Egypt Marc Franco gave a reception at his residence in Zamalek to mark the end of his term in Cairo. Present were the French Ambassador to Egypt Jean Félix Paganon, the Turkish Ambassador to Egypt Héseyin Avni Botsali, the Italian Ambassador to Egypt Claudio Pacifico and the Belgian Ambassador to Egypt Bruno Néve de Mevergnies, the President of the Afro-Asian Lawyers Federation Esmat El-Merghani, the Minister of Aviation Hussein Massoud and artist Hemat Salaheddin.
