By Mohammed Naguib
Beginnings, endings, and sometimes other parts appear to be just a point of view. So, the talk about the situation a year after a certain political status is just as if someone is deep in a well and is asked to describe the surface.
It is only fair that the people facing the political scenario give their full attention to the reform of security and economy in the first place, in a period of extreme instability and conflicts which almost arose between the people of one group and threatened the identity and privacy of another. Their interest in the long-term plans will, then, be diminished, on top of which is the cultural scenario.
The state, therefore, lost a lot of its cultural activities and is now in a state of recession and anticipation on the governmental and official sides. Still waters only ran by some tremors here and there, like some Opera activities and its affiliated activities like the Hanager Arts Center.
The centre was active thanks to some creative artists, especially young ones. What also made things better were the activities of the Cairo International Book Fair. This, however, was still amidst recession in other cultural activities, on top of which is the governmental publication movement as well as the theatre. There was also a significant decline in the level of Egyptian cinema. However, the situation was not that dark; on the other side, amateur theatrical movements increased, presenting more than one daring work like “1980 and upwards” and “Necrophilia”, as well as the dancing show based on the [Ahmed Mourad] novel “The Blue Elephant.”
Private publication houses also increased as well as literary books, which varied from light to deep and serious. This helped attract the reader once again to printed books. The average age of people reading also went down, which surely shows positive impacts after a period of appearance of only the best in the literary scene.
To sum things up, the situation on an official side looks dark and frighteningly in recess, while on the level of amateurs it is highly active. This is the situation of the cultural scenario in short, a year after these political changes which were necessary before the scenario completely drowned in the dark, and lost its identity and entity to turn into a taboo.
