Artists occupying public space to present their work is not new to Egypt; since the revolution erupted in 2011, Egypt’s main city squares and streets have seen an array of public performances, bringing art into people’s lives – Published in Ahram Online. “Mini-Mobile Concerts” in Alexandria is one such intervention. The performance is the brainchild [...]
Review of the opening for Janaklees for Visual Arts, a film collective-turned-art-space that aims to help filmmakers from thought-to-product, thereby supporting film and contemporary arts in the Mediterranean city – Published in Ahram Online. ——————————— Janaklees for Visual Arts hosted several film screenings, installations and live music and video art – all with an experimental [...]
Cairo Urban Initiatives Platform (CUIP) invites initiatives across the huge capital to use their database, map and calendar to increase collaboration and ensure no one must reinvent the wheel – Published in Ahram Online. ————————– Launched in April, the Cairo Urban Initiatives Platform (CUIP in short) functions in Arabic and English as an interactive map showcasing [...]
Unknown even to many Egyptians, southern Egypt is home to several protected beaches of unparalleled natural beauty and splendour — Published in Ahram Online. In southern Egypt’s Wadi Al-Gemal protectorate, which sits on over 7,450 square kilometres of land, lie two beaches featuring exquisite natural beauty, clear waters and an array of wildlife co-existing with their [...]
Near Egypt’s Marsa Alam, about 800 kilometres from Cairo, musicians, film lovers, and environmentally engaged individuals came together for three days in ’3al Ganoob Festival’ — Published in Ahram Online. —- Over 400 people from Cairo and Alexandria camped in the scenic beauty of Egypt’s south, about 800 kilometres from the capital, as part of [...]
May 18th, 2013 
Rowan El Shimi In short-lived digital graffiti messages, SMSlingshot arms the public with digital slingshots to resist street advertising by private companies — Published in Ahram Online.
As part of the visual arts programme of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF), VR/URBAN collective from Germany bring SMSlingshot to Cairo as a tool for public space freedom and to reclaim the streets from private company advertising.
May 18th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi The festival featured some of the most dynamic and creative artists from Cairo’s independent culture community, who frequent Downtown Cairo, and over the past ten years have turned the neighbourhood into a district buzzing with art. Artists and cultural groups, such asThe Choir Project, Mashrou’ El-Mareekh, Maurice Louca, Like Jelly, and Youssra El-Hawary among many others participated in the festival.
“I want to thank the organisers of Hal Badeel, who really transformed the neighbourhood for the past few weeks,” Youssra El-Hawary said before her performance on the closing night. “The streets around the area were full of life in a completely new way.”
A month and a half before the festival started, volunteers transformed the donated Factory Space at Townhouse Gallery in Downtown Cairo from an exhibition space to a theatre. With donated equipment and borrowed seating from Rawabet, the crew managed to make The Factory look and feel like Rawabet used to be – a garage with black walls, a stage on the ground and the sound of independent art filling the room.
The festival was free of charge and a screen was placed outside the space to share the performances with a wider audience.
Hal Badeel is brainchild of Mido Sadek, who is technically responsible for The Factory Space at Townhouse, and Saber El-Sayed, lighting technician who works in several spaces, including Rawabet Theatre.
“People would always pass by and ask around where Rawabet Theatre is. One day, as we sat with that same group, we brought up the idea for the festival. Everyone was excited to get on board. These people are the reason this festival became a reality,” he explained.
“We made sure everyone felt appreciated, by including their names in any public release we make, by giving the volunteers the voice to speak to the media on Hal Badeel’s behalf. It was a collective ownership of everyone involved,” Sayed said.
“Organising the festival was a challenge because we are not really organisers,” Sayed said. “However, many people along the way helped us to put this together, from the poster design to translating artist briefs.”
Most of the participating artists like contemporary dancers Sherine Hegazy, Ahmed El-Gendy and Mirette Mechail and others are friends of Sayed and Sadek. “Even the artists we didn’t know, such as Like Jelly and Rami Abadeer, welcomed the idea with open arms, and were willing to participate with no financial reward because they believed in what we were trying to do,” Sayed told Ahram Online.
Hal Badeel Festival drawbacks
The festival, in spite of its success, had a few drawbacks. The timing of the festival coincided with the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF), which affected the audience of the latter attracting them to Hal Badeel’s events. Operating within the same neighbourhood (Downtown Cairo), perhaps in the future, Hal Badeel and D-CAF could coordinate to assure that the audience has an equal opportunity to attend both festivals.
Another logistical issue was Hal Badeel’s organisers had several performances of different genres set on the same evening. This idea required the stage to be completely reversed for each consecutive performance, and while the technical procedure was executed, the audience was asked to leave the theatre and wait outside until they set up for the next show.
Though the procedure sounds quite natural, it was clear on the final night of the festival when the crowd was too large to assure a fluid movement from one place to another within the narrow streets of the neighbourhood.
Outa Hamra presented their clown show on the street, and then Karima Mansour’s Contemporary Dance School presented their performance inside. There were at least 150 people who were not able to enter, some of which had been there since the start of Outa Hamra’s performance. After the dance show, the audience was asked to once again leave the space so they could set up for Youssra El-Hawary and her band.
This caused a lot of chaos and frustration for the audience. In the future, these issues could be avoided with better programming that secures performances of similar settings to be grouped in one evening.
Future Hal Badeel projects
The clever programming presented great performances, which people enjoyed, making the frustrations worth the effort. The positive energy among the organisers also transcended to the audience as each performance at Hal Badeel felt like a very large meeting with friends and family.
The next steps for Hal Badeel will be to see the lessons learned and how it can be replicated even more successfully in other spaces. “For Saber and I, it is really important that this project continues,” Sadek said. “Cairo needs more spaces for independent artists to be free to really present what they have to offer,” he added.
In the next edition of Hal Badeel, they are considering using the apartments of their friends, who have large reception areas to have simultaneous performances for a small audience. They are also considering taking Hal Badeel to governorates outside of Cairo.
The group also hopes to secure funding, as the festival was entirely financed out of their own pockets, even though the budget was almost non-existent. They also plan to have training workshops for volunteers and technical managers before the next edition of festivals.
“It will remain free for the audience,” Sadek said. “The idea is to keep it free of charge, leaving the door open for anyone passing by to check out the events, and gather a larger audience to help with the outreach of independent artists.”
The festival started as a street festival and ended asa street Shaabi music party, with people jumping around to the electronic and oriental beats until midnight. Hal Badeel is a living, breathing proof that collective efforts and belief in a cause will transform into a reality.
May 18th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi With a relatively big turn-out for the show, one enters the theatre, and finds a non-conventional set on each corner of the stage with a screen at the top. At the start of The Great War, the performers ask the audience to turn off their mobile phones, as it can affect their complicated equipment.
From there, Hotel Modern take their audience on a journey back to the start of the war in 1914, projected on the screen, with a map, seemingly showing European borders at the time, several miniature objects such as ships, trains, gloves, and even leaders being moved by the actors on stage. Simultaneously, a live narration is made with very impressive story telling skills, jumping from one emotion to the next as they give a crash-course on the start of the war, the countries involved, accompanied by Arthur Sauer using homemade props, instruments and equipment to project the sound.
Later, the performance moves from the centre of the stage to the corners, using the same approach to tell moving stories of people affected by the war, including soldiers, young people, farmers and women.
Hotel Modern’s Herman Halle, who is behind the concept, told Ahram Online after the performance that all the stories are real episodes from the war. The group designed the concept and story of the war from published letters, and journals of people who went through the war.
The power of the stories, combined with intricate details of the miniature objects, and how real they look on the screen, offer the audience a truly unique experience. The live sound installation plays an indispensible role in telling the stories; perfectly synchronised with the movements and sounds coming from Sauer and sometimes taking a life of its own.
The experience Hotel Modern manages to create is diverse and truly original. While looking at the screen one feels one is almost watching a documentary on World War I. However, when one’s eye slightly slips to another corner of the stage one can see the performers running around, switching cameras, changing the landscapes and creating this alternate reality live on stage. This dimension between what seems real, and being able to witness how it is created, poses questions even beyond the theme of the performance, on critical thinking, and seeing beyond the norm.
Even though the show is tied to the First World War, it really goes beyond this. The performance brings audiences the stories and emotions of any war: fear, anger, hatred, losing a sense of humanity, and despair.
The performance ends on a positive note with a plant growing out of the dust and crumbling while the sun comes up.
After the performance, Hotel Modern invited the audience onto the stage to see the set for themselves, and get a sense of the scales and the equipment involved. Helle said the group had been working together for several years using these techniques in performances. They settled on the theme of World War I as it allowed them to be creative with landscapes and people and tell a moving and captivating story.
While the performance was impressive, there was a technical issue with the Arabic subtitling at the top of the screen. Some of the subtitles, if there were more than two lines, would not appear at the top. This would be frustrating not only for non-English speakers, but also for non-native English speakers, as with the intensity of the play, and the unfamiliar accent of the story-teller, it would help the audience to have an option to read their native tongue.All in all, Hotel Modern’s The Great War succeeded in moving audiences, showing the appalling nature of war, and at the same time presenting a novel model for performing arts to the Cairene crowd.
May 18th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi “The awards for this year will only be for short films and documentaries,” Abdallah told the audience on stage, stressing their support for young filmmakers in general with a special mention of the outstanding work by Alexandrian filmmakers “who are away from the centralisation of filmmaking” in Cairo.
Best Documentary Short went to Mamnoo El-Ekterab Aw El-Tasweer (Censored Love) by May El-Hossamy. In this film, El-Hossamy brings her family members and others in front of the camera to discuss love, marriage and relationships between Muslims and Christians in Egyptian society.
Her subjects appear completely at ease, sitting comfortably engaging in conversation with her behind the cameras, creating a sense of familiarity with the audience that makes one feel like they are old friends.
The film ends on an ambiguous note, after El-Hossamy reaches a dead-end with her search for answers to why there can’t be love and marriage between the two religions. In silhouette, she sits, with someone who seems to be her lover, on different sides of a couch, wondering why even though Muslims and Christians share the belief in one god, it is so impossible to have an interdenominational marriage or family.
The Best Short Film award was awarded to Alban Wadi El-Nil (Wadi El-Nil Milk Store) by Mohamed El-Hadidi from Alexandria.
The film is shot between night time and dusk. The cinematography by Islam Kamal is worthy of mention. With little dialogue, the film depends on its imagery to portray the emotion of heartbreak the protagonist feels towards his ex-girlfriend, and perhaps women in general at that moment.
The film is powerful as it takes the viewer into a series of surreal images including an old man pressing a suit in the middle of the street, a drummer on his own with his set in different locations in Alexandria, and finally a collection of men in suits waiting to be served milk in complete silence.
Besides the two winners, the jury also awarded Islam Kamal a special award for outstanding cinematography for the film Zakaria to attend the Mediterranean Film Festival in Montpelier. The award was presented by Mohamed Hefzy, producer and founder of Film Clinic, the company which produced Ahmed Abdalla’s award-winning film Microphone (2010).
The jury also gave the Special Jury Award to young filmmaker Alia Ayman for her self-portrait Cartharsis where she turns the camera on to herself during her three-months film study in New York and explores the identity crisis she, along with others of her background, face being stuck between East and West, with even the film itself being bilingual.
“I decided to make this film in Arabic and English, because that’s how I talk,” Ayman says in the film.
The director discovers this notion by unveiling the multi-layers that exist within this complex. Ayman brings into question her academic background of her studies at the American University in Cairo, where she took a class that helped her discover the term “cultural imperialism” which then helped her understand the hybrid that she is.
She also dived into the relationship that she has with her family, who are conservative, and her concern about what they would think when they saw the film where she is discussing some taboos and breaking them at the same time.
Ayman concludes that these inhibitions she has are out of respect, not fear, explaining that in spite of their differences and the contradicting expectations her family had for her, they share a strong bond of love and understanding.
Finally, the jury presented Hanan Abdallah with the audience choice award for her film Zel Ragol (In the Shadow of a Man), a feature documentary where the director interviews women from different backgrounds on their lives, marriage, divorce, the role of women in society and the Egyptian revolution.
The film follows the stories of four women: Badreya from Upper Egypt; Suzanne from Cairo; Shahenda, a political activist and farmers’ unionist; and Wafaa, a particularly well-travelled housekeeper from Cairo.
The director succeeds in getting the audience to really form a relationship with these women, their trials and tribulations, and their stories which show the array of women that exist within the layers of Egyptian society. The audience responded very positively to the one-hour documentary, laughing, listening intently and even crying.
The jury made a suggestion to the French Institute to host seminars, exchanges and trainings on sound engineering in films, an issue which the jury saw recurring in many of the films presented, which compromised the quality of the works.
Overall, the festival showcased an array of talent from the Egyptian independent art scene, and it is to be hoped that more of these festivals pop up at various times of the year to allow audiences a chance to view these works and engage with the filmmakers.
May 18th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi While before, many festivals and culture events would have a limited turn out, or are forced by circumstances to cancel their activities, this Spring, a threshold of normalisation to political turmoil has met, where you have an exhibition opening as part of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF) taking place in Hotel Viennoise of 10 Mahmoud Bassiouny, along with the public multidisciplinary arts event El-Fan Midan taking place in Abdeen Square, both a mere few blocks away from Ramsis Street where 6 April Movement protests were receiving a strong dose of tear gas and rubber bullets in a battle that went into the night.
In Downtown Cairo, a neighbourhood surrounded by concrete barricades, three festivals are taking place this month.
D-CAF, brings a wide range of artists of various disciplines to scattered venues. The programme includes visual arts, performing arts, music, films, workshops and performances and projects in public space. The second edition of the festival started on 4 April and is ongoing until 28 April. Read more on D-CAF and it’s detailed programme here.
While D-CAF is a festival bringing international, regional and local artists on a high-budget large-scale setting, Hal Badeel (Alternative Solution), also taking place Downtown, in the Townhouse Gallery’s factory space, is focused on local artists and working on a zero-budget. The festival started 24 March and has included a variety of artistic events, including music, films, theatre, contemporary dance and even mime and clown performances. Hal Badeel is a reaction to the recent closure of Rawabet Theatre, one of Downtown’s most cherished spaces by independent artists, where the festival operates on volunteer efforts, a donated space and materials, and on artists who do not take money for their performances. The festival does not charge money for tickets, and even has two screens on the street for passer-bys to enjoy the show.
Hal Badeel has only a few scheduled performances left and will close on Wednesday, 17 April, with a performance by circus troupe Outa Hamra, a performance by Karima Mansour’s Contemporary Dance Centre in the Cairo Opera House, and finally a concert by accordionist Youssra El-Hawary. Find the full-programme here.
Taking place near Downtown on the other side of the enclosing walls around Tahrir is the French Cultural Institute’s 9th Edition of the Annual Film Festival ‘Rencountre de l’image’ from April 7 until 15 April, in Mounira.
The festival showcases young filmmakers from Egypt, along with a few regional and French directors. This weekend brings Amir Ramses’s controversial film Jews of Egypt, which is also currently showing in cinemas after state security delays, in addition to Hanan Abdallah’s highly acclaimed film In the Shadow of a Man following four Egyptian women across cultures and social classes. Until Sunday the festival includes many short films and documentaries, with the closing ceremony taking place Monday. Find more information and programme details here.
Leaving Downtown Cairo, the Indian Council for Culture Relations and the Embassy of India in Egypt organises “India by the Nile,” a festival dedicated to Indian performing and visual arts that will run from 13 April to 13 May. The festival is being hosted for the first time in Egypt, but has had several editions in other parts of the world. The festival’s events will span many venues, including the Cairo Opera House, El-Sawy Culturewheel, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria. Read more on the festival’s concept and programme here.
In addition to these festivals, which were precedented by the Cairo Jazz Festival and The Digital Arts Festival in March, culture spaces are bringing strong programmes in terms of both quality and quantity of performances in the city.
El-Geneina Theater, run by Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafi (The Culture Resource) is also returning with a strong programme this April and May, bringing some of the region’s most popular independent musicians, such as Ghalia Benali (Tunisia), Autostrade (Jordan) and Wust El-Balad (Egypt), among numerous others. The theatre, located in Al-Azhar Park, attracts an array of audiences, and is known for handpicking the most interesting performers to come on its stage. Find El-Geneina’s programme here.
A new space on the culture block, Beit El-Raseef in Maadi, launched in February after hosting several festivals dedicated to music, performing arts and handicrafts. The space started off slow but lately, in March and April, has been swiftly developing its schedule. They have been collaborating with Ekaa (Beats) — a record company and booking agency run by musician Tamer Abu Ghazala, which signs some of the most innovative musicians in the Middle East — to bring their artists to Beit El-Raseef. They have been also hosting art therapy sessions and workshops.
With this extensive dose of culture events one can only hope that the cultural dialogue it constitutes can include more segments of society than just the regular art goers, and that audiences can find, amidst all the fragmentation of a constantly escalating political situation, that special understanding that sharing and experiencing art can create.
April 12th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi Ahram Online had extensive conversations with an array of stake holders in this issue including: CEO of Ismailia Karim Shafei; director of D-CAF and Studio Emad El-Din, Ahmed El-Attar; urban planners Omar Nagati and Mohamed Elshahed, and art space managers and artists Tamer El-Said from Cimatheque and Heba Nawara from 10 Mahmoud Bassiouny.
Downtown’s history
One of Cairo’s oldest neighbourhoods, built between the 1900s and 1920s, was once known for its elegance, stunning architecture and for being the shopping and entertainment centre of the city. Over a few decades, it transformed into a dusty, run-down neighbourhood with almost empty buildings; a hub for street vendors and a space for occasional violent political rivalry.
The transformation of Khedevi Ismail’s contribution to Cairo started with The Free Officer’s movement, the 1952 coup d’état that saw a wave of nationalisation all over the country. The government acquired more than half of the 450 buildings that constitute Downtown Cairo, with about a hundred buildings later returned to their rightful owners, leaving those and all the rest with a poor rent and ownership model. This approach by the government kept rent stagnant since the 1950s ignoring the high rate of inflation that would overtake the country.
With the Open Door policy of the 1970s, many of the cafes, restaurants and bookstores that saturated Downtown Cairo, started turning into shops selling imported goods.
The neighbourhood quickly became overly crowded, along with the deterioration of buildings, because the owners over generations became too many, “sometimes up to 40,” to run them due to inheritance laws, according to Shafei. The owners also made practically no money to be legally required to spend on their maintenance, leading the upper-middle classes and upper classes to opt for leaving the neighbourhood.
“There is a major problem in Downtown, which is the socio-economic structure of it,” urban planner Elshahed said. “The real-estate is obviously built for a certain income level. Then, a transformation happened, but this transformation didn’t match the available space.”
Elshahed explained most of the apartments are used for activities that do not work for the spaces, such as a shoemaking workshop, warehouses, storage spaces or small factories, since these are the activities that can be done under such living conditions of the buildings’ poor maintenance.
Regenerating Downtown
A lover of Downtown Cairo, Shafei told Ahram Online that an idea to buy one building in Downtown with some friends as a long-term investment, turned into the company, as we know it today, when they found tens of building owners who wanted to sell the buildings. Shafei attributed this willingness to sell due to all the rent control and inheritance issues of Downtown.
Their vision was to attract a positive traffic to Downtown and bring back tenants from the social segments that had evacuated Downtown Cairo over the decades.
“We think arts and culture attract a very positive traffic,” he said, commenting that arts and culture activities are non-discriminatory, therefore can attract a socio-economic wide spectrum of people.
From there, Ismailia started renting out spaces for artistic purposes. At the moment, they are renting to Townhouse Gallery, Contemporary Image Collective, 10 Mahmoud Bassiouny, and a shop front on Mahmoud Bassiouny Street to Ganzeer. They also give spaces on temporary basis for music video shoots, workshops and exhibitions such as Hotel Viennoise.
“The financial support is important and makes a huge difference for an independent art space,” said artist Nawara. “Also, it’s much easier for me to rent from a company like Ismailia than from a random landlord,” she added, explaining that her project and Ismailia share a goal to both attract people to Downtown and the art scene in general, who do not normally frequent either.
Over the past ten years or so, Downtown Cairo has been the centre of the independent art movement. While art spaces exist in other areas in the city, Downtown Cairo has been the hub for this social movement, on a cultural and political level. According to El-Attar, director of D-CAF festival, people come to Downtown to look for something different, something alternative from the mainstream culture.
“Art moves stagnation. Downtown has been experiencing that in the decade before the revolution with the network of spaces,” said Nagati, adding that with Downtown’s diverse social makeup, the diversity of class and culture creates a good model of co-existence.
El-Said echoed this statement saying, “The social and cultural movement [currently] happening promotes polarisation,” explaining that this goes against what any dictatorship wishes for its people. “Downtown should be the place that answers this question; it should be a place that has the space for inclusivity because this is what we need right now.”
Moving forward
While the artists are benefiting from the support by Ismailia, there have been criticisms to this model in the media, and social circles, accusing the company of attempting to gentrify Downtown Cairo; a process which has been used in many countries to drive lower-income level communities from a place to make way for higher-income level residents and business.
Elshahed does not believe that this applies, “Merely 20 percent of Downtown apartments are populated. We are talking about a place which is depopulated due to reasons that have accumulated over 40 years.”
Nagati agrees. However, they are concerned that without proper safeguards of policies to ensure diversity of income and culture in the area, this process could lead to gentrification. “These debates we are doing are very important to come up with policies to allow for regeneration while avoiding gentrification,” he stated. Shafei has the same concern.
Nagati and his business partner Beth Styker at Cairo Laboratory for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research (CLUSTER) initiated a panel discussion last December in Goethe Institute ‘Artists as Urban Catalysts in Downtown Cairo’ to discuss these concerns with real-estate owners, such as Ismailia and the American University in Cairo (AUC), and various art space representatives such as Townhouse, Contemporary Image Collective, and Cimatheque.
From the many heated discussions that took place, an idea came that this relationship between the downtown real-estate investors and art spaces, needed a mediating body – an independent art council. The council’s role would be to support the sustainability of art spaces and the growth of the scene in general, with funds, spaces, and encouraging collaboration over competition within the small scene.
From the artist’s side, both Nawara and El-Said welcomed this idea. Nawara believes this council needs to work on the attitudes of the people who run the art spaces to encourage collaboration, proper mapping and synchronisation of artistic events and activities.
With a firm conviction in the importance of art for all the other stakeholders in Downtown Cairo, El-Said wants artists to be the ones who take initiative for this body to exist and put forward the suggestions to the stakeholders, not solely react.
Shafei supports this idea, but wants to take it even further by establishing a board of trustees for Downtown Cairo as a whole. He describes it as “a very strong lobby group for Downtown, looking at the area from an urban, economic, cultural, social and environmental point of view.”
While El-Attar does not believe that artists should be burdened with the development in Downtown Cairo, he asserts that they are an integral part of this development. “Any development is an organic thing; the government is involved with all its branches along with artists, businesses and civil society. This development needs a lot of involvement and negotiation not just for it to happen, but so it lasts. We need the kind of social movement that pressures the government to take part in this process,” he said.
April 12th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi “At D-CAF, we’re not presenting a single art form or a single trend. Rather, we’re trying to give Cairo audiences a snapshot of what is available worldwide in contemporary art today,” festival founder and director Ahmed El-Attar says. “We’re trying to make the festival as varied as possible to cater to the widest possible audience.”
El-Attar has been travelling worldwide over the past year to select the participating artists for this year’s event.
He says he considers this year’s event to be the first edition, with last year’s being the “zero edition.”
“We’ve learned a lot from last year’s event,” El-Attar tells Ahram Online, adding that one of the main lessons learned was to expand the duration of the festival from two and a half weeks to a month to allow audiences to integrate the festival into their daily lives.
The festival will include Egyptian, regional and international artists showcasing their work in the fields of performing arts, music, film, visual arts, urban visions (a collection of events in public spaces), and ‘edutainment’ (workshops).
Programme details
The performing arts programme will launch the festival’s events on Thursday 4 April with a contemporary dance performance called Anatomia Publica by Man Drake with choreography by Tomeo Verges (Spain/France).
The programme will continue with other theatre performances including White Rabbit, Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour (Iran) which is basically a text given to an actor on stage to improvise a monologue. Actors featured will include Khaled Abou El-Naga, Aly Sobhy, Ramsi Lehner, Salwa Mohamed Ali and Sayid Ragab.
The programme will also feature performances of Alice by Sawsan Bou Khaled and Hussein Baydoun (Lebanon) along with Le Prince Sequestre by Compagnie L’enteprise (France) which will include collaboration by local theater troupe El-Warsha, Hassan El-Geretly and Boutrous Raouf Boutrous Ghali.
D-CAF will also take several events to the streets of downtown Cairo. The Urban Visions programme will be performed in several public spaces such as El-Bursa, on the courtyard of 10 Alfy Street, and on the shop front of 11 Mahmoud Bassiouny Street.
The performances include a circus performance by Al-Khayal Al-Shaabi called Traffic, a contemporary dance performance by Tomeo Verges (France) featuring Egyptian dancers, In the Midst of Confusion by 100HANDS (The Netherlands) among several other local and international performances.
This year’s music performances, along with the performing arts, are the only events which require tickets, with the rest offered for free.
The music programme, curated by Mahmoud Refaat, founder of 100copies music space (studio and label), brings street culture from different corners of the world to the stage on Thursday nights throughout the festival. The first event, on the opening night of D-CAF, will feature trash pop by Weterbots <3 Bosaina (Egypt) and electronic music Byetone (Germany).
The two middle Thursdays will bring hiphop selections by DeeKay (Syria) and Khadafi Dub (USA) then SADAT (Egypt) and El-Rass & Munma (Lebanon). The final Thursday, will feature Middle Eastern female singers Emel Mathlouthi (Tunisia) and Dina El-Wedidi (Egypt).
The film programme will feature several themes. The Fridays of 5 and 19 April will feature the ‘All Night Cinema’ programme, each night with a different theme. The first of which will be dedicated to West African cinema and curated by Philippe Lacote (Ivory Coast) portraying West Africa today through the eyes of young directors featuring three films back to back, which will also be screened later in the programme.
On 19 April, the night is dedicated to documentary films about peaceful social movements and civil disobedience around the world.
The three films shown will also be showcased separately the following week.
Finally, the event will show films by two Egyptian directors. Blind Ambition by Hassan Khan is an experimental film shot entirely on a cell phone, while Selma El-Tarzi’s Underground/On the Surface is a documentary following the rise of Shaabi music in Egypt with a focus on the artists Okka and Ortega who have taken the music scene by storm.
Visual arts will take an interesting twist this year. Curated by Medrar for Contemporary Art, the programme will focus on digital arts with a focus on interactivity and the audience playing a role in the art work itself.
Kicking off on 6 April in both Medrar’s space in Garden City and Hotel Viennoise in downtown, Egyptian-German collaborative project, InterLAB invites audiences in both spaces to interact with each other through several platforms created by media artists and computer scientists. The project was showcased earlier this year in Medrar where audiences in Cairo and Dresden used prototypes to interact with each other.
Another project, Augmented Airspace, takes place in Bursa. It is a collaborative project between Egyptian artist Dia Hamed and Spanish artist Lot Amoros. It uses a small helicopter and invites audience to look at the city from a bird’s eye view.
German project SMSligshot invites audience to create digital graffiti on the city’s walls with messages about their desires.
Egyptian visual artists Ganzeer and Yasmine El-Ayat will present a collaborative project on a Mahmoud Bassiouny shop front window. Finally, French-Tunisian project I’m Nobody’s Shadow at Hotel Viennoise will create illusions in their performances using lights and shows.
Last but not least, the ‘edutainment’ programme brings a series of workshops geared at children and adults. All workshops need prior registration by sending an email to workshops@d-caf.org.
Starting on Friday 5 April, Olga Sasplugas (Spain) offers stand-alone sessions of Dancing with the Family which will be repeated. Children aged 4-7 years old are invited to take part in ‘The Incredible Book-Making Workshop’ by UK company Bootworks, who are also putting on several shows in the performing arts programme.
Some workshops will be geared towards professionals, such as the Blackbox theatre workshop and the contemporary dance workshop ‘Make Your Move’. Inspired by Hassan Khan’s film, there will be a workshop on filmmaking with your mobile phone, the results of which will be shown on D-CAF’s closing night.
April 12th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi Photo gallery on Cairo Jazz Festival’s opening night in Azhar park featuring Gilberto Gil, Dina El-Wedidi, Ribab Fusion and others — Published in Ahram Online.
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April 12th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi World-renowned artist Gilberto Gil took the stage at the fifth edition of the Cairo Jazz Festival performing a selection of his music as well as Bob Marley and John Lennon covers. He was briefly joined by Egyptian musician Dina El-Wadidi, whom he mentors.
The multi-award winning artist boasts an incredible musical history, as well as a career in political and social activism in Brazil since the 1960s. He is a member of the Green Party in Brazil and served as culture minister between 2003 – 2007. Festival founder and jazz musician, Amro Salah, presented Gil with the Cairo Jazz Festival’s lifetime achievement award at the end of his performance.
A phenomenon, Gil managed to captivate the audience from start to finish and bring them to sway to the Brazilian tunes. As he sang and strummed his guitar, Gil brought a sense of happiness and calm to the crowd with his musical stylings that mix traditional music from his hometown Bahia, in the north of Brazil, along with influences of Reggae, Rock n’ Roll and African music.
“This is one of the natural things we have in our contemporary times,” Gil told Ahram Online regarding events, such as the Cairo Jazz Festival, that bring musicians together from all over the world. “You already have a strong communication system going through television, newspapers and the internet now playing a big role, but being present is still very important, such as someone like me coming here from Brazil to perform; to live, to breathe the same air, to share sights with the local people.”
“So these festivals are very important in bringing people from all over the world, to make their music available for local audiences,” he concluded.
Gilberto Gil and Dina El-Wadidi on stage
Gil was joined by Dina El-Wadidi, along with Wael El-Sayid, accordionist from her band, on stage where they performed a Portuguese song, followed by a cover of Sayid Darwish’s ‘Aho Dah El-Sar’ (This is what happened) and El-Wadidi’s song ‘Hozn El-Ganoub’ (The Sorrow of the South).
“He is the best mentor I could have asked for,” El-Wadidi said on stage smiling at Gil.
In June 2012, El-Wadidi won the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative award, giving her the chance to work alongside Gil in a mentorship capacity for one year. Later this year she will join him on an international tour where they will present their collaborations.
Activism and music
Gil’s smile, and undeniable stage presence was not all that was on that stage. The artist’s music, which he classifies as pop, has inspired audiences worldwide for more than fifty years.
His musical career started in 1963 during his time in the Federal University of Bahia, where he met his long-time collaborator Caetano Veloso. The two, and others with them, created the tropicália movement in the late sixties, which created music, poetry, theatre and other arts influenced by traditional Brazilian culture as well as Rock n’ Roll and African music. Gil and Veloso’s album released in 1968, ‘Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis,’ is considered the start of the tropicália movement and highly criticised the coup d’état staged by the army and their dictatorship in Brazil.
The album got both artists imprisoned and later exiled. Gil’s musical activities continued in London, where he lived for several years before returning to Brazil in 1972 where he again took up environmental activism.
The Brazilian military dictatorship, which was in place from 1964 – 1985, took actions that hit close to home. Through a restricted constitution, the regime stifled freedom of speech through systematic arrest of opposition figures in the name of national security and adopted nationalism, along with economic development as priorities.
However, Gil does not believe that music or art in general can be used as a weapon, but rather that it is always there following people and their movements
“In all the societies that we have, all the nations that we have, the role that music and arts play in people’s lives is a constant role, it’s a daily role,” he told Ahram Online before his performance.
“We breathe music, we eat music, we walk music, we work music, music is making people move all the time, so when people move in a certain direction, like Egyptian people moving now towards more freedom, more openness, more transparency – music is there.”
Gil referred to Tahrir Square, the heart of the Egyptian revolution: “There was a stage where music was played,” he said. “So people were there protesting, questioning the system, proposing new ideas and everything, and music was there but at the same time music was at home, music was on TV, music was everywhere.”
Having dealt himself with freedom of expression infringement, Gil was sympathetic to Egypt’s current situation with the issue.
“It is going to depend on how responsible the government is going to be,” he told Ahram Online. “It will depend on how tuned to a profound sense of governing the government will be. It’s not just an Egyptian issue – it’s an issue everywhere.”
Gil further explained that culture is life, and that work and all these other things people do, are side effects and are secondary in spite of their importance as well. “The peasants go to the land to plant and to harvest during the week, to have a cultural weekend, to relax with the family,” he said. “They go to places, they go to the theatre, they go to the movies for culture purposes.”
“The main purpose of life is culture. It’s loving the children, loving the family, being able to share entertainment with the family, it’s culture, the purpose of life” he added.
“I hope they [the government] will be as responsible as we want them to be for the people’s cultural lives,” he said.
Gil’s career in music, activism and politics continues to inspire people worldwide. Next up Gilberto Gil will be bringing his music and positive vibes to Tunisia on 26 March.
April 12th, 2013 Rowan El Shimi According to Ayman El-Shimi, current director of the Sayed Darwish Hall, the independent theatre does not fall under the management of the Academy of Arts. “We were approached by the organisers of what we were told was a Talents Event and we approved the event to take place,” El-Shimi told Ahram Online. “Depending on the event’s content, it’s the organisers’ responsibility to provide all formal permissions, something we communicated to the person renting the hall.”
“We were also told that the event will be with free entry to the attendees,” he added.
He later found out through online channels that the event was, in fact, a film screening with invitations being sold at LE100, El-Shimi told Ahram Online. “We immediately contacted the director and asked him to clarify the issue,” he explained. “He came to our office and stated he was not aware of all the permits he needed to arrange specifically for a film screening. We extended help in directing him with this issue, but he refused and asked for the down payment, cancelling the whole event.”
Egypt’s film screening regulations
To screen a film in a public sphere, one needs a permit from the Egyptian Film Syndicate and also the film needs to pass through the Egyptian Censorship Board.
However, with the newly emerging independent film scene, many of the projects do not go through these steps. Filmmakers choose to screen their films in independent culture centres and festivals since the syndicate does not have legal procedures in place for independent films, but only for commercial ones. Legally, these state institutions have the right to halt the screening of films that do not have the official permits. Yet, many films are shown anyway in independent locations.
“Our decision is not based on, as we are accused, discrimination against the Brotherhood, as we knew from the very first day who is renting the hall,” El-Shimi stated. “Our decision is based on lack of providing legal support. I cannot bend the law or support any actions that do not have a cleared legal path – making profit is, however, a serious legal problem.”
Yet, according to Dowidar, the permit issued was used as an ‘excuse’ to discriminate against him for his political leanings. When they started publicising for the film, many calls to protest outside the hall and prevent entry were communicated by opposition forces on social media. He suspected the administration of the Sayid Darwish Hall decided to give in to these calls and cancel the film, using the permits as an excuse, the director claimed.
“When I walked in for the meeting, regarding the invitations issue, the first thing they asked me at the theatre was: ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were a member of the Brotherhood?’ This should not even be up for discussion,” Dowidar told Ahram Online.
“Many directors have political inclinations, such as being a liberal or socialist; people should look at the content I am putting forward, not which party I belong to,” he added.
The director further stated the film is media propaganda, even though it has been dubbed as a “Brotherhood production” and first step to the “Brotherhoodisation of cinema.” El-Nahda Cinema, the collective behind the film and same name as the Brotherhood’s Nahda Project, campaigned with the Brotherhood during the presidential elections.
El-Nahda Cinema is a non-profit initiative of young filmmakers, who are looking to make socially driven films that reflect “the ethics and traditions of Egyptian society,” and is not affiliated to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood or its political arm The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), Dowidar explained.
He also clarified that the film had no funding body, and most of the actors and crew acted as volunteers, which is why they were trying to sell invitations for the premier of the film to make the money for renting the hall, not for profit. He also claimed that as soon as he found out that this was in fact illegal, he returned the money to the people who had already paid.
The film has no political messages, according to the director. It is merely presenting an array of ‘social diseases’, such as thuggery.
El-Nahda Cinema has held a press conference condoning the theatre and the governmental bodies who are not supporting them in gaining the permits. In a recent statement on their Facebook page, they also condoned the Freedom and Creativity Front, for not supporting their case, even though they support similar cases of censorship on arts.
“I think the whole issue went far beyond needed parameters. The media was involved, accusing the Academy of Arts of discrimination; while the Academy has nothing to do with this story as well as there was no issue of discrimination from the Sayed Darwish hall’s management. On the other hand, some media portrayed the director as evil,” El-Shimi concluded.
Galal Othman, actor and director and former director of the Sayed Darwish Hall, told Ahram Online the whole story is being advertised by the Muslim Brotherhood in a misleading way. “They are trying to create an image of some kind of discrimination, which is not true.”
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