At yet another festival, Samir Farid keeps an eye on Egypt's best-known auteur Last week, Venice International Film Festival President Marco Mèller announced the programme of the 64th round (29 August-8 September): 4,585 films from 70 countries, 3,122 feature- length, out of which only 57 were selected for the official programme. With its first round held in 1932, the festival is the oldest in the world and celebrates its 75th anniversary this year; on 11 occasions it was cancelled for political reasons but remains, together with Berlin and Cannes, which take place in February and May, respectively, one of the top three. And this year is particularly interesting in that it features Youssef Chahine's latest feature, Heya Fawda (Chaos?) in the official competition. Chahine completed the film despite health problems after his 80th birthday last year, with help from filmmaker Khaled Youssef. Interestingly, the last Egyptian film selected at Venice was Chahine's Hadouta Masriya (An Egyptian Tale, 1982); and the last selected for the official competition at any of three festivals was Chahine's Al-Maseer (Destiny, 1997) -- at Cannes 1997 -- in which Chahine received a special Cannes 50th Anniversary Palm D'Or for his life-time achievement. And the only official-competition award given to an Egyptian film at any of the three festivals, the Special Jury Award of the 1979 Berlin International Film Festival, also went to Chahine -- for his autobiographical Iskendriya Leih? (Alexandria, Why?) All things considered, Heya Fawda is no less important. A kind of tribute to Egyptian cinema, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, it is the only Arab selection in the festival, though there are three Arab women filmmakers on the festival's juries: the Syrian Hala Al-Abdallah in the Horizons Section, the Lebanese Randa Chahal in the Debut Feature Film Section, and the Moroccan Yasmine Kassari in the Short Film Section. The International Competition jury, which gives the Golden Lion Award, is headed by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, and its members are directors Alejandro Gonzàlez Iñàrritu from Mexico, Paul Verhoeven from the Netherlands, Emanuele Crialese and Ferzan Ozpetek from Italy, Catherine Breillat form France and Jane Campion from New Zealand. For the first time in the history of all three festivals, the jury is made up exclusively of directors. The Berlin session last February was weak following Cannes's 60th anniversary "world cinema summit", which boasted huge attendance in May. Many were wondering what Marco Mèller would do to make a success of this Venice session. In other words, which films are left for it? However, thanks to his long experience and good networking with the centres of the film industry worldwide, Mèller has managed to put together a historic event in his turn. Mèller is the only one among the presidents of the three major festivals who knows as much about Asian and Arab cinema as he does about American and European cinema, and looking at the programme, now, the present writer -- who attended Venice for the first time in 1970 to present Shadi Abdel-Salam's Al-Mummiya (The Night of Counting of the Years, 1969), the subject of a book recently published by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina -- can vouch for this being one of the best sessions in its history. IN THE competition are 22 new films, including the latest by seven of the greatest living masters Ken Loach's It's a Free World..., Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching, Brian De Palma's Redacted, Eric Rohmer's Les Amours d'Astrée et Céladon, Nikita Mikhalkov's 12 and Chahine's Heya Fawda. The Out of Competition Section will screen films directed by such veterans as Woody Allen ( Cassandra's Dream ), Claude Chabrol ( La Fille coupéé en deux ), Takeshi Kitano ( Glory to the Filmmaker! ), Manoel De Oliveira ( Cristov�o Colombo -- O enigma ), Im Kwon Taek ( Beyond the Years ) and Julio Bressane ( Cléopatra ), while American director Tim Burton will receive a Special Golden Lion for his lifetime's achievement. The Horizons Section, which screens feature-length documentaries, boasts titles such as Jonathan Demme's Man from Plains, Julian Schnabel's Berlin and Arnaud Desplechin's L'Aimée. As the festival marks its 75th anniversary it also celebrated the 75th birthday of the German filmmaker Alexander Kluge. In the official competition is the American film The Valley of Elah directed by Paul Haggis, with Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon about the war in Iraq. For the first time the festival's selection includes 15 new American productions including Kenneth Branagh's Sleuth and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. The festival organizes a special programme for short Moroccan films -- 14 in total -- in the first Arab special programme in the history of the Venice festival.
