ERTU Goes International

Returning from the forty-fourth edition of MIPTV featuring MILIA (a TV industry exhibition for content creation, production & distribution) held in Cannes, France last April, Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) announced it has sold broadcast rights to 225 hours of its own productions to several countries — including Turkey, France, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong. The diverse ERTU programs range from children’s shows, TV serials and Islamic dramas to made-for-TV films. Following a meeting with ERTU’s Amira Rashed, the international marketing director for satellite and TV, representatives of Eurasia Film Market and Korean Broadcast also expressed their interest in participating in the thirteenth Cairo International Market for Radio and Television set for July at Media Production City.

After completing his role in Roland Emmerich’s upcoming epic 10,000 B.C., due out in summer 2008, internationally renowned Egyptian star Omar Sharif returned to Cairo, where he is currently shooting his first Egyptian TV serial. The production, Hanan we Hanin (Tenderness and Desire) is directed by Inas Bakr and stars Sawsan Badr, Adel Hashem, Madlyn Tabar and Nesrine. Sharif plays Raouf Soliman, an Egyptian engineer who has lived three decades in America and returns to Egypt where he is reunited with his first flame, Hanan, played by Badr. The cast and crew flew to America last month to shoot scenes for nine episodes tracing Soliman’s early marriage with his wife Amina (Tabar).

At the same time, Sharif will also star in the new movie El-Mosafer (The Traveler), formerly titled Men Dahr Ragel (From a Man’s Backbone). The movie is the directorial debut of Ahmed Maher and will be the first film produced by the Ministry of Culture in 39 years — following the Egyptian classic El-Mummia (The Mummy) by the late great filmmaker Chadi Abdel Salam.

The Traveler traces three days in three different times in the life of one man (played by Sharif) from Port Said in 1948 to Alexandria in 1973 until he reaches Cairo in 2001. The movie will also star Khaled El-Nabawy as the younger Sharif character, Amr Waked, Basma and Lebanese singer Serin Abdel-Nour.

Sharif’s last appearance in Egyptian cinema dates to the 1993 drama Dehk we Leab we Gad we Hob (Laughter, Games, Seriousness and Love) by Tarek El-Temissany.

China and Egypt have signed an agreement to jointly establish a Confucius Institute in Egypt’s Cairo University to offer Chinese language programs to Egyptian students and training to Chinese-language teachers.

According to the agreement, the International Council of Chinese Language will grant Cairo University between $50,000 and $100,000 to jump-start the establishment of the Confucius Institute.

(Born in 551 BC, Confucius was a great Chinese thinker, philosopher, statesman and educator.)

The office will also provide multimedia teaching materials to Cairo University, while China’s Beijing University will send Chinese-language teachers to Cairo to work at the new institute. “Promoting Chinese-language teaching in Egypt will certainly facilitate exchange and cooperation in all fields between Egypt and China,” the Chinese ambassador to Egypt pointed out.

In an effort to promote the Chinese language and Chinese culture abroad, the Chinese government plans to set up at least 100 Confucius Institutes around the world to help foreigners learn Chinese

At the opening ceremony of the thirteenth National Film Festival of Egyptian Cinema, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced the founding of an Egyptian Film Archive to ensure film negatives are not spirited outside of Egypt and that a copy of each film is preserved. The minister’s announcement caused plenty of ‘negative’ criticism among Egyptian cinema figures, who grumbled that it is common knowledge that most of the rights to Egyptian classic films including negative prints were sold out to El-Arabia Company and to Rotana Cinema for satellite and DVD consumption.

The Cannes Film Festival, which ran May 16–27, featured not one but two films from the Middle East. And no, they weren’t from Youssef Chahine. The contenders, Sukar Al-Banat (literally Sweetness of the Girls, but screened by its official English title Caramel) and Ragol Dayee (A Lost Man), come from two female directors out of Lebanon.

Sukar Al-Banat is directed by Nadine Labaki — who has directed most of Nancy Agram’s videos — and tells the tale of five women as they sit in a beauty salon. Each woman has a unique story, with Labaki also acting one of the roles.

The other film, directed by Danielle Arbid, is the story of the French occupation in Lebanon and life in Lebanon during the war.

Cross-cultural collaboration. Hakim has done it numerous times — most famously in his duet with James Brown. Recently, two infinitely less famous people have teamed up for a small collaboration. Lebanese stars Nicole Saba and Massari teamed up when the latter — who lives in Canada — was here for the Arabian leg of his tour. Saba jumped up on stage as Massari was performing in front of a staggering 5,000-person crowd and joined him in a few songs. This isn’t the first time Saba has jumped up on stage in the middle of a concert; she also joined the Scorpions, Sean Paul and Turkish celebrity Tarkan. Only this time, Saba is rumored to actually be collaborating on a record with Massari for a future release.

Seventy-eight monuments and art works were reported missing from the Arab World Institute in Paris. Philippe Cardinale, the media spokesman at the institute, initially refused to comment, pointing out that the matter is in the hands of the police. However, he did say that there is an atmosphere of sadness hanging over the staff. During the institute’s latest inventory, 39 pieces of modern art and 39 Islamic monuments were found missing; the tally also revealed that over 100 pieces were found in the storerooms but were not accounted for in the books.

Alkarma Edutainment, Sesame Workshop and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are cur-rently working on celebration arrangements for the tenth an-niversary of the Egyptian version of Sesame Street, Alam Simsim, the award-winning television program for preschoolers in Egypt.

The trio announced that they will present First Lady Suzanne Mubarak with the Sesame Workshop Pioneer Award in recognition of her strong support for the program since its inception in 1997. The award ceremony will also be attended by Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, Minister of Information Anas El-Fiqqi, Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Aboul Naga and Minister of Education Yousry El-Gamal. Afterwards, a conference will be held with a panel of international experts to focus on ways for Alam Simsim to best have a measurable impact on young children. New episodes will feature a long list of stars including Boshra, Khaled Abol Naga and filmmaker Sadra Nashaat.

Afew weeks after being appointed a UN goodwill ambassador, Khaled Abol Naga’s American film debut Civic Duty opened in the United States. The film caught the attention of critics from the Boston Herald, The LA Times and The New York Times — the latter even calls it a “smart little thriller” and gives it a decent review compared to other films about post-9/11 America. Other papers weren’t necessarily as kind about the film, but they were taken with Abol Naga. Online publication the Herald Net wrote, “Peter Krause is a stolid presence who gives the impression of being too tall to fit into his body. Egyptian star Abol Naga easily out-acts [Krause] — yet another way this movie is unfairly stacked.” The Hollywood Reporter called Abol Naga charismatic, while claiming that the movie left a little to be desired. If critics remained underwhelmed by the film, Abol Naga’s performance seemed to impress.

Film director Khaled Youssef, most famous for Ouija and Khiyana Mashroya (Legal Betrayal) and Menna Shalaby, star of Ouija and most recently Mahatet Masr (Cairo Station), have made it official and gotten engaged. The actress and her beau are planning to get married before the end of the year, after their house in Sixth of October City is ready. The couple met on the set of the movie Al-Aasifa (The Hurricane) and has since worked together on various projects, such as their most recent project Heya Fowda (roughly translated: “Is This Chaos?”).

While it still remains to be seen what Dubai will be doing with this year’s film festival, set to launch its fourth edition December 9–16, it seems they’re in for some competition from neighboring emirate Abu Dhabi. Speaking at a press conference at the sixtieth Cannes Film Festival last month, Abu Dhabi officials, including royal family member Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon al Nahyan, announced the creation of an international film festival that would run from October 12–17.

Popular Egyptian TV presenter Nashwa El-Roweiny, who presents a self-titled show on Dubai TV, has been tapped for the position of executive director of the festival. El-Roweiny is also head of the Pyramedia Agency — which got Amr Waked, Khaled El-Nabawy and Syrian actors Ghassan Massoud their roles in Syriana and Kingdom of Heaven.

Abu Dhabi’s film enterprises don’t stop there — plans are also underway to start an Abu Dhabi film commission headed by Abed Awaad, openly challenging Dubai’s attempts to establish itself as a regional filmmaking hub. The commission will finance feature films based on scripts from all over the world.

Meanwhile, Dubai Studio City is set to open its first soundstages next December, competing with Egyptian Media Production City (which, by the way, posted an ad in the Cannes’ Daily Edition of Variety about the shooting of international films like Nefertiti and Young Cleopatra in 2007).

Dubai has also inked separate deals with Marvel, Universal and Nickelodeon to build theme parks there, while Abu Dhabi stumped up $200 million to build the world’s largest Guggenheim Museum. The UAE has reportedly ponied up a $700 million license fee to build a branch of the Louvre in the desert, with access to the Paris museum’s collections.

Breaking his silence on whether he’d jumped or been pushed, Neil Stephenson, the former director of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), held a press conference last month at Cairo’s Shepheard Hotel. Announcing that he had been forced out of his position, Stephenson said that he could not get fair press in Dubai so he decided to speak to Egyptian media. Stephenson also hired Los Angeles lawyers to ensure his “efforts over the past five years to create DIFF are given due and fair credit.”

The Canadian claims he originally came up with the idea of the film festival after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States as a “cultural bridge.” He then plucked many Toronto Film Fest talents to DIFF’s three successful editions. At the end of his speech, Stephenson said that he plans to speak about his DIFF experience at various world festivals in upcoming months.  et