The fourth annual Cairo International Video Festival ended Thursday after a successful four-day screening program of short films and video art from around the world. The festival, which is produced by Cairo-based Medrar for Contemporary Arts, a platform for young emerging artists in Egypt, was held downtown at the Goethe Institute.
Inaugurated in 2005, the festival is intended to encourage innovation and low budget production by emerging film artists. This year’s festival emphasized international interchange as well, welcoming guest programs by the Pakistani Vasl Artists’ Collective, the Netherlands Media Art Institute, and Finland’s AV-arkki.
Videos were submitted in response to an open call and were selected for their quality, authenticity, and conviction in investigation of unique subject matter. Medrar was able to put together an extensive program featuring speeches, loop videos and short films by international artists.
The festival’s focus on short films is in-line with Medrar’s mission of supporting oft-overlooked alternative art forms that are accessible to artists with a range of budgets and talents.
“No government or cultural institutions are currently supporting short filmmakers in Egypt. We want to preserve and encourage people to explore the short video art from as an important means of expression in today’s society,” said Amy Arif, program coordinator at Medrar.
The festival kicked off on Sunday with a presentation and discussion session with Egyptian Artist Hamdi Attia, followed by screenings of short films by directors from Iran to Singapore to Greece to Canada. Emerging Egyptian filmmaker Mark Lotfy’s film “Sechoire” was a highlight of the evening, while Elsa Werth’s “The Singing of the Tree,” presented by the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (ENSAD), gave new filmmakers a professional artistic standard to aspire to.
Monday’s program, by the Netherlands Media Art Institute, featured contributions by European artists. Perhaps the most unique selection was “The Good Life,” a guided video tour of an architectural design project by Belgian artists Kathy Vermeir and Ronny Hereimans. The project is a collaboration between a group of artists to transform an abandoned warehouse into luxury apartments and explores the various meanings of “the good life.” The video tour of the project is an interesting study in representation and provides insight into the collaborative process of creative work.
Tuesday’s run-down featured another Egyptian contribution: “More or Less” by Nada Zatouna. Another highlight was “Pine Nuts” by Danish artist Lasse Lau. The film looks at the history of Horch Al-Sanawbar, an ‘invented’ park in Beirut and explores its social and historical importance through the eyes of Lebanese immigrants living in the United States. The approach taken by this film showed the possibilities that short film opens up on terms of scale: a subject such as the park could make a great feature-length film but becomes a charming vignette when kept in short form.
Wednesday’s short program was headlined by “Dromosphere,” a challenging work by German filmmaker Thorsten Fleisch that explores four-dimensional space-time, an aspect of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Fleisch uses simple visuals to make this complicated concept accessible. The result is an elegant portrayal of the phenomenon of speed. The schedule also featured a film by Egyptian artist Ahmed Nabil entitled “Egypt the Trip.”
The fourth year of the festival has proved another success for Medrar’s mission to promote alternative art in Cairo. The festival provided a vibrant arena for young local and international artists to come together in a creative exchange of ideas that is sure to be reflected in the local arts scene into the future.
