Egypt Rising: Portents of Revolution in Recent Egyptian Cinema

Egypt Rising: Portents of Revolution in Recent Egyptian Cinema

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The Tahrir Square Revolution of January 25, 2011 that toppled the two-decade reign of Hosni Mubarak may have taken the world by surprise, but to close observers and citizens it was the culmination of years of protest all across Egypt. Since 2004, downtown Cairo has been the site of numerous strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins, many of which were repressed with violence by government forces. The media blackout imposed by the regime was largely effective in preventing coverage or dissemination of these events in the mainstream press, but the remarkable recurrence of these protests—particularly those in front of the Syndicates of Journalists and Lawyers, which were so frequent that they seemed almost permanent over the past three or four years—made them impossible to ignore.
The Tahrir Square Revolution of January 25, 2011 that toppled the two-decade reign of Hosni Mubarak may have taken the world by surprise, but to close observers and citizens it was the culmination of years of protest all across Egypt. Since 2004, downtown Cairo has been the site of numerous strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins, many of which were repressed with violence by government forces. The media blackout imposed by the regime was largely effective in preventing coverage or dissemination of these events in the mainstream press, but the remarkable recurrence of these protests—particularly those in front of the Syndicates of Journalists and Lawyers, which were so frequent that they seemed almost permanent over the past three or four years—made them impossible to ignore. As with other countries living under repressive regimes and near-total media control, in Egypt it fell to the cinema to chronicle and articulate these voices of dissent. While mainstream Egyptian cinema of the past three decades frequently drew on contentious, grabbed-from-the-headlines political issues—police corruption, the misery of life in the slums, etc.—all too often these were simply backdrops or flimsy topical hooks, effectively emptying these representations of their consciousness-raising potential.

By contrast, the films in this programme—independent and auteur, fiction and non-fiction—aim to capture the profound mal-être of a society that is denied the right to speak of the ills that afflict it. Yet even while dealing with a host of dire, pressing topics—the cancer-causing chemical infestation of Cairo’s water, endemic poverty and systemic unemployment, the corruption of the electoral and judicial systems, inter-religious prejudice and violence, sexual repression and sexual harassment—they also convey that poetic sense of being at a particular time and a particular place that is one of cinema’s most unique and valuable properties. Against a barrage of twenty-four-hour “news,” cinema is often called upon not only to deliver more truthful information but to act as an alternate public sphere. To regard the films in this programme as portents of January 25 is not to project retrospective meanings onto these complex works of art, but rather to appreciate how differing streams of independent Egyptian cinema, long before the Tahrir Square revolution, had already taken on the mission of engaging with the complex social and political reality of a country emerging from more than three decades of dictatorship.

—Rasha Salti and Cameron Bailey

Films in Egypt Rising: Portents of Revolution in Recent Egyptian Cinema

    • The Aquarium

    • As conservatism and religious observance have come to define public life more and more over the past three decades in Cairo, the dimly-lit, sinuous passageways and dark corners of the city’s aquarium have become favoured meeting spots for amorous couples looking to evade the gaze of passers-by. Following the lives of two people who are destined to meet in this makeshift love nest,The Aquarium is a poetic and complex exploration of a repressive culture’s politics of desire, denial and alienation.

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    • Neighbors

    • Tahani Rached's exploration of a historic Cairo neighbourhood offers a fascinating capsule history of one hundred years of Egyptian history.

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    • Eye of the Sun

    • The first independent film to get a limited release in Egyptian theatres, Ibrahim El Batout's renegade, low-budget indie is an affecting portrait of one of Cairo's poorest and most neglected neighbourhoods.

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    • Four Women of Egypt

    • In this engaging, often humorous documentary exploration of the contradictions and conflicts in modern-day Egypt, there is little the four women of the title agree on, but nothing they won’t discuss. Socialist Amina Rashid, Nasserist Shahenda Maklad, socialist and feminist Wedad Mitry and Islamist Safinaz Kazem come from very different backgrounds, but these vivacious, politically engaged activists maintain a deep and committed friendship, arguing openly for their different affiliations.

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    • Cairo Exit

    • Several films in recent years have been set in the slums of Cairo, but Hesham Issawi’s Cairo Exit is an uncontrived, uncompromising portrayal of the difficulties of everyday survival for young men and women with ambition.

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    • Heliopolis

    • In his striking feature debut, Ahmad Abdalla draws back the veil of faded grandeur from Cairo's luxurious Heliopolis district to reveal stories that deepen and broaden our understanding of one of the world’s great cities.

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