An ironer witnessing the extinction of his profession; a political blogger following the unusual thorny paths of his parents; a blind musician struggling with extremism and . camels! These topics, and several others, make up the 12 short documentaries produced this year by students in the professional and graduate programs of the American University in Cairo. The films were screened last Sunday at the university s Jameel Center Auditorium.
Some of these filmmakers are first-time directors; others are artists, photographers and TV presenters. The majority of their works are technically well constructed and, overall, the texture of these films is crisp. There s always something visually interesting, even in the least substantial of these offerings.
The obvious best of the bunch are Sara Abu Bakr and Bassel Sabri s Kasr Al Masr: Palace of Critical Care and Olfa G. Tantawi s The No Choice.
The first is a plucky, challenging portrait of Kasr El Eini, one of Egypt s oldest and biggest public hospitals. The film captures the chaos, horror, despair and moral ambiguity of a major institute, constantly bombarded with criticism and accusations of incompetence with an unflinching, raw eye. Abu Bakr and Sabri s objective tone which puts forward the plight of the doctors amid all living hell of Kasr El Eini is what elevates this truly gripping short film above all the rest.
The second revolves around the unusual family of political blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah, who was imprisoned for 45 days last year after participating in a peaceful protest. The film briefly traces his parents’ influence on him, his involvement with the opposition political group Kefaya, the cruel aftermath of his imprisonment, as well as his relationship with his wife (who s also a political blogger) and the prickly life he chose to lead.
The scale of the film is intimate yet grand in scope. Abdel Fattah s extraordinary life is the main attraction of the film. In telling his personal story though, Tantawi also depicts the broad Egyptian political climate and the audacity of those young men who decided to risk their entire existence and future for a cause many deem to be out of reach.
Alaa Al Dajani s Resonance was another highlight. The film follows Moustafa Antar, a blind Lebanese musician who found his vocation and deliverance in eastern music that his fundamentalist father regarded as transgression. There are moments when Antar recounts the physical abuse he was subjected to by his father that are both painful and stirring. His little accounts on the warnings he had received from some of his extremist neighbors and anonymous metro passengers reflect a bigger picture of mounting radicalism which is taking over a considerable part of our current society.
The Daily Star Egypt s Farah El Alfy, along with Haidy Ammar and Habiba Yussr, delivered a very pleasant and original report of one of the last foot-ironers He refuses to adapt with the sweeping technology and revolutionize his profession in Lokmet Eish (Making a Living). Full of witty anecdotes and the quirky gimmicks the ironers use, the film also observes the extinction of these traditional, aging professions and the changing economic behavior of a people opting for practicality over perfection.
The rest of the documentaries fall between the conventional and half-baked ambitious efforts. Away From Home, Nadia El-Gowely s chronicle of a female Iraqi refugee in Egypt, was one of the biggest disappointments. The problem with the film is not the melodramatic pitch courtesy of Egyptian TV drama that s been employed heavily in the film or the overbearing score that tries, and fails, to force certain sympathetic emotions on its audiences. Home is simply too tame to seize the attention of the average viewer and the Iraqi crises is treated in a fashion that totally understates the horrors the refugees have been experiencing over the last few years.
Lobna Habib, Ibrahim Sherif and Islam Ahmed s A Life on the Nile suffers from the same shortcomings. The film, which centers on a day in the life of a felucca captain, is too short, slightly shallow and chooses to portray its peculiar subject s life with few details.
The good intentions and passionate exertion behind even the weakest film of the bunch is palpable and it s really hard to judge some films that are considered to be early attempts for these filmmakers. However the key mistake the aforementioned documentaries suffer from is their insularity and lack of strong human stories. More than half of these films fail to involve us with their characters and their worlds feel as if they re cut off from the rest of their social cultures. That s what perhaps separates a great filmmaker from an ordinary one; his aptitude to transcend the constraints and principles of his medium to produce a story that aims to completely absorb or change the life of its viewers.
