By Mariam Elias/ Special to Daily News Egypt March 17, 2011, 8:30 pm
In the long history of Egyptian cinema, experimental film has
always been a rarity,overlooked by critics and ignored by
art-house audiences.
Produced in early 1970s,Nagy Shaker’s
experimental film “Sayf Sab‘een” (Summer 70), was one of the few
Egyptian attempts in the realm of avant-garde cinema and is now
regarded as one of the pioneering films in the field.
For that reason, the film was selected by New York’s Museum of
Modern Art(MOMA) for its film archive, becoming the first Egyptian
movie to receive such an honor.
Last November, Shaker’s film was screened in
MOMA under the three-year program
“Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema, 1960s – Now,”
organized by Jytte Jensen, the curator of the department of film in MOMA,
and Rasha Salti, artistic director of ArteEast. After touring various
parts of the globe, the series has reached the Tate Modern in
London this month.
The series presents an outlook on the chronological evolution of
experimental film and video made in the Arab world from the 1960s
until today.
Other Egyptian films included in the series include Maha Maamoun’s
“Domestic Tourism II” (2009), and Shadi Abdel Salam’s classic feature “
The Mummy/Night of Counting the Years” (1973) and his short
“El-Fallah El-Fasseeh” (The Eloquent Peasant, 1970).
Shaker was studying in Rome where he met Italian artist Paolo Isaja.
Using an old 16mm camera, each artist alternated between directing,
filming and recording. Together, they created the 70-minute black
and white silent film.
“It was a time when youth culture was so active and
radical, as many decided to bail on the idea of money
and became hippies.They wanted to change the world,
although it was much better than now! We also choose
to be rebellious but through our film,” explained Shaker
at a lecture held in Helwan University in December
following a film screening.
Gloria Mirlino, an American nurse of Italian descent,
became the connecting point between the two, each forming
his own subjective account of the model. The result is an
expression of a certain youthful frustration packed with conflicting
ideas such as freedom, familial bond and loss of identity.
“Isaja was interested in the effect of childhood on people’s
personality and wanted to link the past with the present,
while I wanted to link the present with the future,” Shaker said.
The two different segments were then edited to produce
a film essay that runs like a conversation between
the two directors where the voice of each is
deliberately made undistinguishable from the other.
Running like a visual poem or a melodic stream of thoughts,
“Summer 70” is a study of the language of cinema, an analytical
experimentation in the vocabulary of the moving image.
Composed by Suleiman Jamil, the film’s soundtrack mixes
electronic rhythms with instrumental beats. Jamil was interested
in developing folkloric music and his sound score is an
extension of this endeavor, acting like a link between western and
eastern cultures.
Rather than a direct interpretation of the picture, Jamil’s music
contrasts at some times and harmonizes at others to add different
level of connotation and vibrancy to the picture.
Watching “Summer 70” instantly provokes several questions
concerning the anthology of experimental film in Egypt and the
Middle East. One being that today’s much-discussed independent
movement in film and video might have roots that are yet to be
acknowledged, suggesting that there might be other undiscovered
pioneering works.
The screening at MOMA encouraged many international critics,
historians and curators to reconsider the contribution of Arab cinema
to the global avant-garde wave, especially since the Arab world has
always been excluded from the discussion of modernity and
international film history.
What’s also remarkable is how this collaboration between
two artists from different backgrounds produced in 1970 lacks
the clichéd ethnic iconography or stereotypical categorization
of the west and east that defined post-9/11 art, even
when it indirectly tackles the issue of identity.
“Summer 70” will be screened at Tate Modern London
on March 24 under the touring program
“Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema, 1960 – Now.”
Original Link:
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egyptian-experimental-film-rediscovered.html