The success of Cairo’s first Swiss Film Week has been a pleasant surprise.
Despite the LE 30 ticket price, the screenings were packed to capacity at nearly every showing.
A diverse crowd and interesting guest speakers helped make the event, which wrapped up this week, one of the most exciting cultural happenings in Cairo in recent memory.
Some of the screenings featured a series of fascinating full-length documentaries covering a range of subject matters. Post-screening discussions with both prominent Egyptian and Swiss directors gave audience members a chance to better understand the themes.
“Forget Baghdad, a film by Iraqi-Swiss director Samir, chronicles the life stories of four prominent intellectual Iraqi Jews living in Israel. All four men are writers, former members of the communist party in Iraq, and Israeli citizens. Each recounts his experience growing up in Iraq in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society, and the subsequent immigration to Israel in the early 1950s.
Each of them views the move to Israel in different terms, though all have experienced discrimination as Jews of Arab descent. The youngest, writer Samir Naqqash, continues to write in Arabic and does not consider Israel his country, despite living there most of his life.
The others take a less polarized approach to life in Israel. At some point in their new lives, each begins to write in Hebrew instead of Arabic, and learns to adapt to a new “homeland despite the challenges posed by their Arab Jewish identity in a society dominated by Jews of European descent.
The film also features Israeli-born Iraqi Jew Ella Shohat, a scholar of film and cultural studies currently living in New York. In the film, Shohat discusses the discrimination she faced growing up as an Arab Jew in Israel caught between societal expectations and her Iraqi roots.
Richard Dindo’s “Genet a Chatila centers on French writer Jean Genet’s interactions with the Palestinian resistance in Jordan and Lebanon in the 1970s. Genet’s involvement in the Palestinian cause culminated in his witnessing the aftermath of the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Chatila. This experience prompted the writer, who had not published in 20 years and was suffering from cancer, to write his final novel, “Prisoner of Love.
The film, which features the commentary of Palestinian ambassador to France Leila Shahid, is an emotional account of Genet’s intimate experiences living with Palestinian resistance fighters, and his own poetic reflections on the meaning of revolution. “Genet a Chatila is an unexpected take on this period of Palestinian history from a passionate European supporter of the resistance.
“Ernesto Che Guevara: the Bolivian Diaries was another remarkable film by Dindo screened in the festival, The film focuses on the life of the famous revolutionary, and looks particularly at the final year of Guevara’s life, which was spent trying to establish a guerilla movement in Bolivia. Drawing heavily upon Guevara’s dairy as well as interviews with Bolivian villagers and army officers who met Guevara during that time, the film presents an unromanticized account of his final months.
In stark contrast to other films about the Argentinean revolutionary, Dindo’s portrayal highlights the harsh realities faced by the guerillas, which included an almost total lack of support from local peasants, the very people they were fighting to help.
The documentary also presents a detailed account of the grim events surrounding Guevara’s capture and death. The film’s factual, no-frills approach was a refreshing and honest contrast to the usual revolutionary bravado, allowing the audience to appreciate the level of devotion that Guevara had to his cause.
Afsar Sonia Shafie’s “City Walls: My Own Private Tehran details the struggle of survival endured by three generations of women in Shafie’s family: her maternal grandmother, her mother, and, finally, herself. Through their stories of poverty, divorce and revolution, the film reveals the impossible plight faced by women in Iran, and how things have gotten both better and worse over the years.
Despite the horrifying experiences suffered by Shafie and her female relatives, the director’s affection for both her country and her family comes through clearly in the film, resulting in a balanced and contextualized cinematic perspective on women’s issues in Iran punctuated with the characteristic humor that carries Iranian women from day to day.
The Swiss Film Festival was an unprecedented success; Cairo can only hope to see more of the same from Cinemania in the future.
