Independent Arab cultural projects are set to flourish across the Arab world, Secretary-General of the Arab Cultural Fund Ghassan Salama tells Rania Khallaf The board of the Arab Cultural Fund (ACF) met with Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, in Cairo last week to discuss prospects for cooperation between Arab governments and the ACF, with the latter's secretary-general, Ghassan Salama, a former Lebanese minister of culture and a professor of political science at the Sorbonne in Paris, announcing after the meeting that a preliminary agreement would be signed in two months' time. The agreement, the result of Moussa's interest in the ACF's activities and of lobbying by the fund itself, should mean that "Arab governments will now realise the important role played by the ACF in nourishing the Arab cultural field," Salama told Al-Ahram Weekly in an interview a day before the meeting took place. Born from an initiative sponsored by Basma El-Husseini, manager of Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy, the aim of the ACF is to encourage cultural and artistic exchange among Arab countries and to find financing for independent cultural projects in all artistic fields. The fund, which started operations three years ago, was eager to receive project applications from Arab young people in particular, Salama said. "We received 360 applications in the first year, which I think is a huge number," Salama told the Weekly. "But in the second year, it was more than twice this number, which means that on the demand level the need is there." This demand has also been very diverse, both in terms of the national origins of the applications and of the projects asking for funding. "Of course, there are more applications coming in from Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, but there are also some applications from Sudan, Iraq, Mauritania and Yemen, which is a great sign," Salama said. "By the end of this third year, we will have a clear overview of the participating countries, and we intend to make some sort of balanced distribution of grants." "I observed that applications coming from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia were very few in number, for example, when compared to other regions. To balance this, we intend to give some kind of privilege, or special grants, to these countries and to publicise our mission more in the local newspapers of countries like Yemen and Sudan, which are unprivileged in terms of cultural services." The ACF has already funded several important projects in its few years of existence, among them Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman's The Time that Remains, the only Arab film in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year, the Syrian Lich Theatre and the Abaad Theatre from Morocco. According to Salama, while the ACF receives its own funding from various international organisations this does not necessarily mean that funded projects tend to take a cosmopolitan view of art rather than one that reflects Arab identity. "My own view is that globalisation and identity politics are mutually supportive," he said. "Contrary to the common view that says that exploring identity goes against globalisation, my view is that globalisation actually encourages identity-based works. Identity is being re-invented by globalisation. Therefore, what we need is a sort of a critical attitude that views identity and globalisation as two sides of one coin. It is creativity and human value that is expressed through art. The way you think and the way you are are what count nowadays, without necessarily being obsessed with identity politics." While the ACF was originally tailored to fund applications from individuals alone, Salama also said that this should not necessarily be seen as restricting its mandate, which could extend further. "My ambition is to expand our mission. My personal wish is for the fund to become an advisory unit for cultural policies in the Arab world," he said. The fund's budget has also increased from $500,000 in its first year of operations to $1 million this year. Salama also stressed the fund's independence. "We refused to be attached to any governmental organisations, choosing instead to raise funds from a range of sources -- individuals, governmental organisations, NGOs, and also governments directly," he said. "As an ex-minister of culture myself, I know the ailments that can infect an independent cultural organisation like the ACF. Therefore, we are determined that the ACF should remain independent, despite temptations to the contrary." "First of all, we do not receive conditional grants from governments, something which has happened to other organisations in the past. Official donors in the Arab world talk all the time about the importance of civil society, but they refer to it as a body somehow attached to the government. They do not understand the important role that civil-society organisations have to play in the development of the whole society." "However, this does not mean that we will stop seeking funds from Arab governments. Culture will benefit a lot from partnerships between the public and private sectors. However, like in a successful marriage, each part should recognise the vital role played by the other. Thus far, our problem has been that governments have either ignored us or tried to buy us," Salama said. "This means that governments need to be educated. And we are going to do that." As part of this process of education a summit meeting took place last January in Kuwait to discuss such public- private partnerships, and not only in the cultural field. In the light of this meeting, and bearing in mind the ACF's objectives, Salama said that his wish in his meeting with Amr Moussa was "to tell him we are ready to cooperate with Arab governments." The ACF can help governments make progress in capacity- building, training and fund-raising in the cultural field in particular, Salama said. "However, if there is one thing I learned from working as a minister of culture it was not to take governments too seriously. In fact, we are not counting on governments to help us develop our activities." Thus far, he said, the ACF has been working out of a modest office in Amman, Jordan, and has been carrying out its activities through the Internet in the interests of economy and to keep overheads down. No topics are out of bounds as far as proposals for funding are concerned. "The only criterion we have is the quality of the project. If we started selecting projects according to content, then we would start to discriminate unfairly, and this would turn the ACF into just another copy of the governmental organisations that already exist -- something that we reject," Salama said. Today, the ACF is working towards establishing a special fund for the production of Arab documentary films, Salama expressing a wish to carry out "joint ventures with the large TV networks, because producing good-quality documentaries is expensive." As a first step towards the realisation of such a wish, at last Saturday's Cairo press conference, attended by Salama and members of the ACF's board, including Algerian novelist Amin El-Zawy, the Moroccan novelist and critic Mohamed Berrada, and El-Husseini, it was announced that the ACF would be allocating $170,000 to support the production of Arab documentary films.
