Artellewa screens it like it is. Beating in the pulse of the nitty-gritty of Cairo life in Giza’s impoverished Ard El-Lewa neighborhood is this artsy spot that hosted two movies by filmmaker Ibrahim Abla on Tuesday.
“Menena Fina (Among Ourselves), a documentary, and “El-Hob fi Zaman El-Kollah (Love in the Time of Glue), a prize-winning feature film, were produced by Abla while studying at the National Film Academy.
“Glue, his graduation project, went on to earn him the Jury’s Grand Prize at the French Culture Center’s Encounter of the Image festival a few months back.
Son of the noted painter Mohamed Abla, Ibrahim’s work speaks volumes as a talent to be recognized in his own right.
Abla shows no fear in tackling two edges of the taboo triangle of politics, sex, and religion in his movies. Shot in Bulaq neighborhood, his 19-minute documentary “Among Ourselves delves in matters that clearly implicate themselves with corruption, whereas sex is the salient theme in “Glue.
Arriving to Ard El-Lewa prepares you for the theme of the documentary, “Among Ourselves, which sheds light on the daily nightmares of commuters. As pointed out by an interviewee, in a country where everyone feels they are unjustly treated, it seems impossible to blame anyone for seeking out their own best interest.
So when the microbuses transportation fare, for example, is raised from 25 to 50 piastres, it is difficult to choose sides between the drivers and the customers, both of whom feel the crunch of rising prices. Abla digs down into the roots of the problem, highlighting the demands of police officers hedging for bribes, the pains of a shutdown when policemen lock uncooperative drivers, and the customers who are occasionally forced to walk.
The evergreen debate about the tok-toks pops up in the film when an interviewee criticizes a country that imports rickshaws yet does not issue them license plates.
Criticism itself is bifocal: one man fears being documented for fear that his free speech will be punished, while another older man is keen on accompanying the filmmaker to make a statement against the state of affairs regarding transportation.
“Love in the Time of Glue begins with a shot of dogs humping, a succinct introduction to the theme of the 11-minute movie. “Glue refers to kolla, the intoxicant inhaled by the lead character, who is equally intoxicated by desire.
The tok-tok makes a return in Abla’s film, but this time as the site of sexual escapades for the lead character and some of his clients.
Having dedicated the film to his father, mother, and sister, Abla revealed to Daily News Egypt that he had wished to make a film that would not be “too naughty to accommodate his sister as audience.
The power of the movie lies not only in its clever direction, most prominently illustrated via a surreal montage of locations involving these sexual encounters, but also in its final twist where the feminine object of these sexual escapades is revealed.
It is in this final moment that the film makes the transition from being a definite cut above the depiction of boyhood fantasies to being a work of wit and intelligence.
As an upcoming 24-year-old artist, Abla’s work already shows more than a hint of promise, dealing as it does squarely with themes that are too often hush-hushed in Egyptian society, and bringing them back to where they begun to the earth they live and breathe in, to Ard El-Lewa.
