Cairo film festival wants to return to Arab spotlight
CAIRO (AFP) — The 31st Cairo International Film Festival opens on Tuesday amid controversy, seeking to retake its place as the Arab world's international cinematic meeting point after years in the wilderness.
Competing with Morocco's Marakesh film festival -- widely seen as more creative -- and that of Dubai -- more wealthy -- the CIFF will this year highlight British films, with 15 of them being screened.
The opener is "Death at a Funeral," a black comedy by British director Frank Oz, creator of the Muppet Show, described as "putting the F U in funeral" which has caused controversy because one of its characters is a gay priest.
Egypt's outspoken Al-Badil daily attacked "so-called liberal newspapers who only see evil in everything (and) who have launched a pre-emptive attack on the festival's choice of 'Death at a Funeral'.
"As usual cinema pays the price of being stuck between the Islamists on the street and a regime that is bankrupt of civilisation," Al-Badil said in an editorial on Tuesday, slamming Egyptian society's "Achilles heel of religion."
"We are retaking our position at the forefront of cinema," the festival's president Ezzat Abu Ouf told AFP, pleased to have the likes of US actors Matt Dillon and Harvey Keitel attending the festival on the banks of the Nile.
For the festival's patron, Egyptian telecoms magnate Naguib Sawiriss, "the improvement started in 2006; this year we want to salute European cinema, not American blockbusters."
Nineteen films from 16 countries have been selected to compete for the top prize, the Golden Pyramid, to be awarded by a jury headed by British director Nicolas Roeg who created the renowned 1970s horror flick "Don't Look Now."
Another competition is open only to Arab films, with 13 taking part -- including four from Egypt, two from Algeria, three from Morocco, two Syrian and one Lebanese.
There will also be special screenings of six examples of young Moroccan cinema.
A total of 153 films from 100 countries will have been shown by the time the festival closes on December 7, with the notable exception of the Israeli production "The Band's Visit" which has been boycotted by the organisers.
"Personally I think it's a mistake. Even if the Israelis are the enemy of the Arab world, you have to know their way of thinking, their culture," Sawiriss told AFP. "You shouldn't mix politics with culture."
He says the film, a comedy about members of an Egyptian police band who find themselves lost in Israel, "should not have been banned here, but public opinion is not my opinion and as a democrat, I bow to their decision."
Egypt's cultural milieu has an anti-normalisation policy with Israel ever since president Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty in 1979 that was widely unpopular among the Egyptian people.
"It's a policy, even if I don't like the word, that has lasted decades and has been approved by five previous presidents of the festival. I don't want to be the one to change it," said Abu Ouf.
Only two Egyptian films are taking part in the international competition, although according to critics they are not up to the quality of last year's successful "Yacoubian Building," taken from Alaa Aswani's renowned novel.
"Egyptian cinema remains the reference point for 350 million Arabs -- its actors and actresses are the best in the Arab world," said Sawiriss, conceding nevertheless that works of international quality are rare.
"It's true that we need more 'Yacoubian Buildings,' but it's also a question of means, which we will find them because we are the only ones to have a real cinematic industry in the Arab world," said Abu Ouf.
Although famed Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's "Heya Fawda" (Chaos) was in competition at the Venice Film Festival in August, it will not take part in Cairo and instead sees its Egyptian premiere at a private screening on Monday.
Chahine, Egypt's best-known director, is opposed to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak and to Islamism and has always denounced censorship in all its forms as well as religious fundamentalism which he says is rising incessantly.
