Agroup of impressive, original one-minute videos produced by local artists were screened last week at the Rawabet Theater, marking these amateurs' first ventures into the motion picture medium. The event was the product of a five-day workshop organized by the Townhouse Gallery and the Netherlands-based One Minutes Foundation. The workshop is part of a larger project called The One Minutes Africa Project. The main objective of the workshop is to provide artists, from across the black continent, with relatively inexpensive video media to express an idea or a concept in just one minute. "Most artists who are not experienced with video find it difficult to produce a video, but when it's just a one minute video, it seems so much simpler and more encouraging, says Aukje Dekker, a Dutch coach who toured the world, teaching techniques and principles of this artistic outlet. The idea of one-minute videos originated in the Sandberg Institute in 1999 as part of a fine-arts postgraduate assignment. The concept took off from there and has been welcomed by artists all over the world. Applicants for this workshop are required to have some artistic background. Experience in video art, nonetheless, was not a prerequisite. Eighteen local artists participated in the workshop. Each was asked to choose an idea on the first day and then spent the remainder of the workshop's duration developing and putting these concepts into play. In a friendly atmosphere, participants enjoyed the process in spite of the hard work. While creating one-minute videos may seem like a simple feat, it took artists a considerable amount of time to complete their work. Some looked desperate for both the trainer's instructions, and for additional time. Twenty-two-year-old Mohamed Ezz, experienced video production for the first time through his film "Metro. "I wanted to capture the essence of the Metro station, said Ezz. The movie comprised of a screen split into four parts; each depicted part of the metro station and the various events occurring in there. When asked whether this workshop helped him learn and master this medium, he responded, "I now know a lot about making videos, but I still need some more knowledge and experience before I can do everything I want to. The end result of the workshop offered some truly remarkable efforts. Hoda Farah's "Give Me My Space is an interesting mash of sound and camera effects. "Color, by Amado El Fadni, follows a black man painting a white man black, and a white man painting a black man white. "Color is an allusion to people's deep-rooted desire to change those around them and the inability to accept the "other . "Holter Monitoring is a cleverly crafted attempt by Omar Awad to portray the unstable psyche of a man via unusual, edgy camera work, combined with energetic music and well-placed images. Mohamed Fahmy's video is greatly influenced by his work as an illustrator. His presentation centers on an average-looking girl, certainly not cover girl material, placed inside the cover of a beauty magazine. She manipulates and distorts the titles of the magazine as an act of rebellion against beauty standards set by such forces. She ultimately sends them a message, "Up Yours, which also happens to be the title of his video. One work that stood out as the sole comedy in the bunch is Essam Abdallah's "Interview With An Artist. Abdallah plays a snobbish artist, in a very ugly outfit, arrogantly discussing pretentious, inane art. Suddenly, the artist disappears from all frames and the cameraman begins to look for him. He finally finds him in the bathroom masturbating. The video ends with the artist swearing at and chasing the cameraman, demanding to seize the scandalous tape. But not all movies were up to par and some fell short of the standards set by the winning works of their counterparts. "I Like the Minute, I Hate the Minute, for example, accomplished only half its goal as the audience did indeed hate the minute, not as much though as "Waiting, where viewers were left impatiently waiting for the movie to end. "This is the first video art workshop in the gallery, comments Yordanka Evgenieva, the Townhouse Gallery project coordinator who's adamant to encourage more similar events. "Anybody can submit their one minute videos; you don't have to be part of the workshop. If you have a concept, do it and submit it online, says Evgenieva. Submissions will be entered into the international One Minutes Project competition and can be sent to theoneminutes.org.
