Egypt
Egypt Delegation
September 26-October 3, 2010
Expert: Simon Tarr, Animation package
Expert: Sandra Ruch
“After we showed the animation program, the students immediately started asking us to give them direction on how best to make their own films. They were absolutely passionate, and in some ways we were not ready for it. They wanted desperately to make films, and we weren’t going to be there long enough to help them do that.” – Simon Tarr
Delegate Report
Simon Tarr
It was clear early on from our itinerary that this was do be a somewhat unorthodox series of programs during our stay in Egypt. The main goal of our programs was to maximize direct intellectual contact between the Egyptians and us, and to use the films we brought as a way to facilitate that contact. The programming was extremely interactive and creative, and Expert Sandra Ruch and I were keen on connecting with as many people as we could.
Cairo
We first went to the Higher Institute of Cinema, a state film school that is charged with training cinema workers for the Egyptian film and TV industries. The Dean, Adel Yehia, met with us in his office for a conversation about Egyptian and the politics of censorship. Sandra and I separated and gave different presentations to different groups of students. This group specifically requested that I come and present new and emerging forms so, after showing about 25 animation students in the audience selections from the animation program (The Stork and All Creative Work is Derivative), I talked about digital animation techniques and current issues facing American independent animators. It was a very engaged audience, but with only a few questions. I discovered soon after that it was actually the very first day of the school year, which explained some of the students’ trepidation.
Next, we went to the El Sawy Culture Wheel, the Cairo youth center built under a highway by Mohamed Sawy, to honor his late father, Abdel Moneim El Sawy, former Minister of Culture. We gave a talk/screening to the general public first––to about 40 people in the second-largest hall in the place. It was publicized as “The History and Modern Developments in Documentary Filmmaking,” so we talked about hybrid forms––specifically the recent proliferation of animated non-fiction films. We showed Nina Paley’s The Stork and All Creative Work is Derivative, and Gary Leib’s Unnatural History of Wall Street, followed by discussion. Several people stood up to talk, and a recurring theme was frustration; they felt that they had stories to tell but that they were not allowed to tell them. Given that we were being taped for broadcast, I was impressed that people felt comfortable enough to speak publicly.
El Sawy Culture Wheel: Sandra and Simon pose in front of a poster
After our public presentation came a big experiment. The US Embassy put out an invitation for young people to take a two-night animation workshop. They’d start work during those first two days, and then race to finish their films by Friday night, where they’d be screened in public and given awards. A dozen very enthusiastic people from all walks of life showed up––each with a different area of knowledge. I gave them a set of criteria; their job was to make an animated film about their current neighborhood––20 years in the future. The students seemed simultaneously stumped (it’s a tough restriction) and baffled (they said they were not used to having so much creative leeway).
The next day, we headed out to the American University in Cairo, a huge school founded by American researchers in the 1920s who thought that there should be a US research presence in the Middle East. About 20 students and members of the general public came to our program on “Independent and Documentary Filmmaking: New Challenges and Opportunities.”
We showed the complete animation program, which received a good response and sparked some excellent discussion as we polled the room to find out what kind of projects the attendees were working on. We discovered at this presentation that we needed to preface some of the films with a quick explanation of some cultural images. For instance, the image of a stork carrying a bundle doesn’t mean anything on the surface here, American-style televangelism is non-existent, the image of a ticker tape is confusing, and the image of a piggy bank is pretty much meaningless.
The northern exurbs of Cairo (the location of AUC) feels like they’re in the middle of nowhere right now, but in ten years, it’s possible that it will be in the center of a new Cairo. It turns out that our decision to screen The Stork as an example of the problems of sprawl is not a uniquely American issue.
After a break, we return to the El Sawy Culture Wheel for the second night of workshops. All of the students returned with laptops and storyboards. One of the more outspoken students summed up the problem many of them are having: When they take production classes in school, they learn skills and software, but not idea development or creative thinking. I gave them as much help as I could in two hours; the next time I’ll see them is on Friday for the final screening.
Alexandria
We took the morning train to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, where we met up with our contacts from the American Center there, Bridget Walker and Samia Khalil. They took us to our first presentations at Alexandria University, where we met the Dean of the Faculty of Communications, and then spoke to 40 students, almost all women. After we showed the animation program, the students immediately started asking us to give them direction on how best to make their own films. They were absolutely passionate, and in some ways we were not ready for it. They wanted desperately to make films, and we weren’t going to be there long enough to help them do that. However, we did give them some tips on how to find resources and find communities to make their own work better.
Sandra and Simon with students, faculty, and the Dean of the Faculty of Communications at Alexandria University
After a lunch conversation with some television news producers from Alexandria’s Channel 5, we headed to the American Center, a gorgeous old mansion that now serves Consular and programmatic functions. We spoke to about 15-20 young men and women about how to use social media to connect to audiences. These students also wanted to learn how to make their work better, not necessarily how to connect to audiences, as the original program intended. So, we asked them to show us the work they’d made so far, and gave them strong critiques. Then, knowing we were scheduled to see them again in the morning, we assigned them a task: Make a short documentary about pedestrian risk on the Corniche (a large and dangerous road in Alexandria that has been a source of many recent injuries), but with some rigid restrictions designed to make the students think of their videos in different, more cinematic ways. We didn’t leave until very late that night, but were already becoming quite close to these new students.
Early the next day, we headed back to the American Center and were interviewed for Channel 5 News and a local radio station before viewing the students’ work. The student filmmakers had been up all night working and, frankly, their work was astonishing. Literally overnight, they transformed the work they’d been doing into pre-professional work, ready to be polished and taken to the next level. It was difficult to say goodbye.
Cairo
After returning to Cairo, we meet with the Deputy Minister of Tourism at the Tourism Ministry of Cairo University to talk about strategies for attracting film production to Egypt. Afterward, we head to the university’s Faculty of Mass Communication, where we met with the Dean and some professors, who explained to us the uniqueness of their English-language program in journalism and communications. Then Sandra and I split up to give different presentations. Mine was about social media and independent filmmaking in the US for about 30 students; I showed the animation program and talked about how many of the makers use the Internet and social media to reach their audiences.
That night, we made presentations at an organization called SEMAT––the acronym is Arabic for “independent filmmakers for production and distribution.” It’s sort of a combination of a production company, private film school and boutique distribution house. We were asked to talk about challenges that face production and distribution of independent films, but as we met with the SEMAT board members, their needs became even clearer.
Many of the attendees of that night’s program were going to be traveling to the Ismailia Film Festival a few days hence to take part in an intensive student filmmaking project. Sandra and I were also scheduled to be at Ismailia at that time, and they wanted us to work with the film crews as they developed their work. On this first meeting night, they wanted us to talk about these challenges from this point of view.
We entered a room packed with about 20 students, and we already knew many of them! These were students from the El Sawy Culture Wheel, and from other programs we’d given that week. We certainly hadn’t expected to have such extended and continuing contact with so many people, and we were really starting to feel like we knew these folks as colleagues.
The next afternoon, we returned to the El Sawy Culture Wheel to see the final results of the animation workshop. The people at the Embassy provided a small Flip camera to be given as a prize to the best film of the night, and the place was buzzing. People brought their families and got all dressed up; there were about 60 or 70 people in the audience. It was impressive for students to put together an animated film in a week and, in the end, we decided that one piece about digital intrusions on family life was the most completely realized. All the films made by the students in our workshop are available on the US Embassy in Cairo’s YouTube page.
Ismailia
On our last day, we drove out to the city of Ismailia on the Suez Canal for the Ismailia Documentary Film Festival, where the students from SEMAT were staying in a kind of intensive summer camp filmmaking experience. We spent extended time with each crew of filmmakers, critiquing their scripts, storyboards, etc., to help them get ready for shooting over the next few days. We gave them everything we had, as we weren’t going to be able to stay and help during the production process. Sandra and I had spent so much time connecting with these young makers over the course of the week that it was a real gift to us.
Earlier in the week, we had learned that a problem in the tourism industry in Egypt is that most people come once, go see the Pyramids, and then never return. This way of visiting one of the world’s great cultures unfortunately keeps tourists from connecting with what makes Egypt great: it’s people. All of our time on the Nile was spent connecting with people, and because of it, we’ve never really left.
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