Atteyat Al-Abnoudy 1 KASKCINEMA DON/THU 21 OCTOBER 16:30
Husan al-Tin
Ughniyat Touha al-Hazina
Atteyat Al-Abnoudy
Atteyat Al-Abnoudy
1971, EG, 16mm, Arabic spoken, English subtitles, 12’ Film print courtesy of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.
1972, EG, 16mm, Arabic spoken, English subtitles, 12’ Film print courtesy of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.
Horse of Mud
Sad Song of Touha
In haar eerste film, gemaakt met een heel klein budget en geleend materiaal, schetst Atteyat Al-Abnoudy het basisproces achter het vervaardigen van leemblokken langs de Nijloevers. De censors weigerden de film omdat hij zeer arme mensen laat zien ondanks twintig jaar van revolutie in Egypte. Uiteindelijk verleenden ze toestemming voor niet-commerciële vertoningen waarna de film toch meer dan dertig internationale prijzen zou gaan winnen.
Ughniyat Touha al-Hazina, een portret van de straatartiesten in Caïro en in vele opzichten de zusterfilm van Husan al-Tin, is Al-Abnoudy’s tweede film en afstudeerwerk aan de filmschool in Caïro. Het kunstenaarschap van deze groep van vuurvreters, piepjonge slangenmensen en andere artiesten wordt gevat in niet-opdringerig camerawerk, vergezeld door de spaarzame en spokende voice-over van dichter Abdel Rahman Al-Abnoudy.
In her first film, made on a shoestring with borrowed equipment, Atteyat Al-Abnoudy captures the basic process of mud-brick making on the banks of the Nile. The film was refused by the censors, who didn’t like to show the people as very poor after twenty years of revolution in Egypt. Eventually, they gave permission for non-commercial screenings, after which the film went on to win more than thirty international prizes.
In many ways the sister film to Horse of Mud, Al-Abnoudy’s second film, her graduation film at the Film School in Cairo, is a portrait of Cairo’s street performers. The artistry of this community of fire-eaters, child contortionists, and other performers is captured through the lens of Al-Abnoudy’s unobtrusive camera, accompanied by the spare and haunting narration provided by poet Abdel Rahman Al-Abnoudy.
“For the first time, the people talk about themselves, and we listen to their voices, not a cleverly written commentary on what the people are doing, like strangers coming from the sky, telling us what we are seeing now … The brick factory workers dominate the screen: their faces, their hands and their suffering … I worked on this 10-minute film for two years, because I had no money, and also because the bricks have to be dried in the sun. I shot the film at the end of the summer, and I had to wait till the next summer to complete it.”
“I don’t want to make films because of some beautiful subject or because there’s something fascinating me in the colours or anything like that. We always tend to see lovely houses and lovely hills, the decor and other fantastic things before us on the screen. But the poor people and the working class are not on the screen, when they have the right to be. When I talked to the young belly-dancer in Sad Song of Touha, for instance, she said she really would like to be a dancer in a cabaret, because she always goes to the cinema and sees these belly-dancers and beautiful girls. She said, ‘I would like to see myself on the screen.’ So I said, ‘why not!’”
HUSAN AL-TIN
82
UGHNIYAT TOUHA AL-HAZINA
OUT OF THE SHADOWS