Cutting Close to the Bone, a section attuned to current affairs, is this year turning its attention to one of the most important historical events in recent years: the Arab Spring. In a question of weeks, a range of different countries began to take steps to change their differing situations and their stagnant political systems. Spring 2012 will be remembered in the history books for the mass demonstrations in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia.
We are going to bear direct witness to the events using short films made on the ground while history was being made, but distancing ourselves from the insistent stream of reports on our TV screens, and through short films in which reality gatecrashes the fiction and impregnates it with truth...
As in previous years, ALCINE is working with the Casa Arabe. The aim is to provide a reminder of this struggle, which began in Egypt on the 25th of January and brought its thirty year dictatorship to an end, through the eyes of its filmmakers: Sherif Arafa, Mariam Abou Ouf, Marwan Hamed and Mohamed Aly, among others.
As a consequence of the urgent need to record events, improvised films began to appear documenting uncertain times for the Egyptian people. The collective film entitled “18 Days” employs ten short films to describe how the directors have “lived through, learnt of or imagined” their individual revolutions, as announced at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The role of the filmmaker consists in acting as both witness to and creator of the imagery of this new epoch. The news media images of the demonstrations and the occupied squares are set alongside personal stories, which are often told best in short films: A street vendor wonders if she will go to hell or become a martyr after dying her hair “God’s Creation”. An employee locks himself into his shop for days after hearing the screams outside, which make him think war has broken out “Revolution Cookies”. A grandfather and his grandson find themselves going round and round in circles in the car when the tanks block their way home “Curfew”…
“18 Days” uses fiction, documentary creation and archive images to tackle the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime from a number of different viewpoints. Ten pieces shot without a budget, which narrate and bear witness to the complexity of the revolution through a series of anonymous stories in one of the first works of film to describe this historical event.
Three recent Tunisian short films portray the situation immediately before the change. While the Egyptian short films depict the consequences of years of dictatorial ostracism, these three films present the causes.
