MORE than 20 years after the Egyptian Ministry of Culture limited the number of copies of a foreign movie to only five, some people think this is unfair, especially with the growing number of cinemas with several screens, allowing several movies to be screened simultaneously. "The number can sometimes be raised to eight copies with special permission from the Minister of Culture, but it's still insufficient,as even with the eight copies, that's only one copy for every 10 million Egyptians," says Antoine Zeind, one of Egypt's Zeind, a pioneer of Hollywood distribution in the Arab world, serves as Fox and Warner Bros.' primary agent in Egypt. "After more than 40 years in this field, I can safely say that a foreign movie will never affect the local cinema in any country," he says confidently. "People always like their local cinema, as it speaks their language, dealing with their problems and their lives, but foreign movies can save the day for picture houses when they don't have enough local movies to show." Zeind adds that the limited number of copies makes him concentrate on Cairo and Alexandria, while the rest of the country may wait for several months before they get the movie, which means great losses are made. "Many Arabic movies make big profits and run in the cinemas longer than any foreign productions at the same time, so why all the fuss?" he asks, adding that the shortage in local productions should be compensated by foreign movies. "Another problem, which both foreign and local cinema suffers from is piracy, which is now one of the big dangers for the cinema industry," stresses Zeind, who wants the Egyptian authorities to get tough on pirated works. Zeind sees that the number of cinemas in Egypt is low, considering the size of the population. "The limited numbers of cinemas also make it difficult to get foreign movies other than American ones. It also makes the distribution of independent movies very difficult." While some Egyptian filmmakers constantly complain about the censors, Zeind says that Egyptian censors now are open-minded and he has no problems with them. "They know that the world has no boundaries anymore and that it's absurd to ban a production that will be soon available on TV and Internet. "But this doesn't mean passing movies that may disturb our social values, so when we get a new film, we watch it first and, if it contains anything unsuitable, we suggest that it shouldn't be in Egypt," says Zeind, adding that some Egyptian movies are nowadays hotter than any foreign production. "But the problem is that these controversial scenes don't benefit the plot; they're only added so the movie makes more money," he complains. Egyptian tastes in films are similar to international tastes, so movies which do well internationally tend to do well here too. "Comic movies and science fiction are the most popular," adds Zeind. Although Egyptian cinemas are now screening the Indian movie My Name is Khan, after a long absence of Indian films from Egypt, Zeind doesn't think that it will be easy for European or Indian American movies are doing so well. "If we wanted the European and Indian movies again in Egypt, we would have to develop specialised cinemas for these films from other countries. "We should also organise special screenings for highly artistic movies that the critics and intellectuals like to watch, but which aren't commercially viable.
