Al-Ahram Weekly
To witness the birth of a cultural event, writes Soha Hesham, is an intriguing experience
The location of LAFF in Luxor was particularly appropriate, not only because of the southern city’s relative proximity to sub-Saharan Africa but also because its ancient grandeur evokes Thebes as a capital of the continent. The event featured exhibitions and workshops as well as the publication of two books: the Dictionary of Moroccan Cinema Director compiled by the film critic Samir Farid, which includes an impressively exhaustive and up-to-date list of filmmakers in Morocco; and Mahmoud Ali’s translation of the 1994 book Black African Cinema Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Associate Professor of Film and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University, which documents the history of that cinema from its earliest beginnings until the 1980s Òê” offering invaluable insights into the development of cinema in Africa before and after independence in the 1960s, which did not bring about tangible improvements.
Ukadike blames the deterioration of cinema production in Black Africa on the leaders, who still use it as a tool to perpetuate their own power rather than a tool of social or political development. He focuses on the emergence of independent production based on personal finances of filmmakers in Ghana and Nigeria. Black African filmmakers have mostly taken their fight to Europe as a result of the circumstances. Taking into account the centrality of European influence, Ukadike gives a helpful account of the oral storytelling heritage as a creative template for the interpretation of cinema and other forms of popular culture in Black Africa. Most filmmakers, he says, sought a realistic take on their topics, in line with the predominant ideology of that time; they sought to contribute to building society. The most devastating problems for African filmmakers have been technical and financial: the African countries’ lack of even basic infrastructure and the scarcity of funding. Yet Ukadike believes that black African cinema has achieved artistic maturity, with African filmmakers now forging their own cinematic language and style. The important question at the end of the book is where black African cinema is headed Òê” something all the more interesting in light of world cinema now adopting a total liberation of style. Cinema in countries like Angola, Guinea and Mozambique, by contrast, has been a way to generate social awareness or worked as ideological propaganda.
A vast number of black African films as well as many films from North Africa were screened, the only Egyptian contribution to the official competition being Mawloud fi 25 Yanayer (Born on 25 January), directed by Ahmed Rashwan; it premiered at the Dubai International Film Festival and was screened at the Muhr Arab Film Festival as well, but this is its Egyptisn premiere. In it Rashwan presents a wealth of footage from the Egyptian revolution in the course of 80 minutes, starting with 25 January and followed by the 18-day sit-in and the Friday demonstrations following the toppling of Mubarak; it ends on Friday 27 May, which called for a secular state, causing much controversy when the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements refused to participate. According to Rashwan, speaking at a seminar following the screening, “I wasn’t planning to make a film about the revolution at the beginning; I took my camera simply to document the events”. Yet it was this compulsion Òê” the decision not to “stay at home and watch the revolution on TV with my childrenÒ–ê” that resulted in art: a minute by minute visual document of the revolution covering the full range of experiences from the brutality of the police to “the people’s committees” that were set up to maintain order after policemen stopped working on 28 January.
Rashwan’s own appearance in the film Òê” sometimes accompanied by his children Òê” gives it a movingly human and convincing touch. In one scene, for example, he is at home with his children watching the incident known in the media as the Camel Battle. Yet sometimes this approach turns to acting Òê” during the announcement that Mubarak was stepping down, for instance Òê” and has the opposite effect. When Rashwan appears holding his camera and shooting the effect is rather Brechtian, on the other hand, and largely appropriate to the endeavour. Still, the power of the film is its documentary accuracy, combined with a human-experience dimension restricted to the narrator and director Òê” Rashwan himself.
