Tips from the culture desk: From a new Ahmed Naji book to a show of enchanted drawings

As Sham al-Nessim approaches and people make their first beach plans of the year, cultural operators are busy programming various things on either side of the holiday weekend. If you missed Ali, The Goat and Ibrahim during its cinematic release, you can catch it until Tuesday at Zawya along with French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s melodrama It’s Only the End of the World. Otherwise, we recommend several other events below, including a book signing, a gallery opening, and an all-female music night to keep you busy throughout the week.

Ahmed Naji talk —  Monday

Novelist Ahmed Naji, who served 10 months of a two-year prison term on charges of offending public morality, will give his first public lecture since his release on a suspended sentence (pending a final verdict) to mark the publication of a new collection of short stories. In a talk to be moderated by Amr Ezzat, Naji will discuss language and its limitations, profanity, and how words can end up on trial. The event will include a reading of excerpts from the collection and a book signing. A limited number of Naji’s previous book, a collaborative graphic novel titled The Use of Life, will also be available.

7 pm, April 10, Goethe Institut, 17 Hussein Wassef St., Midan al-Misaha, Dokki, Cairo. More information here.

Unfamiliar — Tuesday

For this edition of Unfamiliar, an event series focused on female artists, Berlin-based Canadian artist Camara Music will perform material from her debut album, while Mada Masr’s Habiba will present an original sound piece that uses field recordings to explore gender performance in Cairo. Painter and makeup artist Chanel has also created one of her trademark "living painting" installations for the event, while Nadia Khashan will provide the video-mapping visuals for the night.

10 pm, April 11, Zigzag, 6 Qasr al-Nil St, downtown Cairo. More information here.

Two Lebanese documentaries —  Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday

Throughout the week, Cimatheque will screen various documentaries from the Middle East. Two in particular have caught our attention. Bassem Fayad’s Diaries of a Flying Dog (2014), which will be shown on Sunday, sees the director trying to find cures for the anxiety he and his dog suffer during the making of the film. On Tuesday and Thursday, there is Ahmed Ghossein’s My Father is Still a Communist (2011), the story of the filmmaker’s upbringing and his absent father. Working with found material, mainly the recorded audio cassettes his parents used to communicate, the film paints a nuanced picture of war, economic migration and childhood.

Diaries of a Flying Dog: 7 pm, April 9 and My Father is Still a Communist: 7 pm April 11 and 4 pm, April 13 at Cimatheque: 19a Adly Street, downtown Cairo. More information here and here.

The Gentleman Caller — starting Tuesday

The Alexandria-based performing and digital arts company El-Madina are putting on a production of The Gentleman Caller, which has been adapted from Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and is directed by Ahmed Saleh, for four consecutive days. The multi-language performance is about a family seeking to marry off their daughter in pursuit of their material ambitions. The play will also be performed at Cairo’s Falaki Theater after Easter.

7 pm, April 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 at Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria. Tickets: LE30, available at the Bibliotheca box office or by online booking.

Doa Aly and Islam Zaher: Remnants of Enchantment — Wednesday

A two-person exhibition of new drawings featuring Doa Aly and Islam Zaher, who both attended a state-run fine arts institution in the 1990s, explores the legacy of fine art traditions in their artistic practices. Recent work by gallery artist Aly, who just exhibited at the 2017 Abraaj Group Prize in Art Dubai, has mainly taken the form of video and dance interventions, while Zaher has continuously engaged with the medium of oil painting and is the recipient of multiple awards from Cairo’s state-run Youth Salon. It should be interesting to see two diverse artists engage with the fundamental medium of drawing.

7 pm, April 12, Gypsum Gallery, 5 Ibrahim Naguib St, ground floor, Apartment 2, Garden City, Cairo. More information here.

Serge Daney film week - Starts Sunday

In collaboration with Cimatheque, the Institut français d'Égypte will host four screenings of films that inspired French film critic Serge Daney (1944 - 1992). The films on offer include Jean-Luc Godard's Tout va Bien, Alain Resnais's Night and Fog, Ziad Kalthoum's Immortal Sergeant, as well as Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's Too Early, Too Late.

April 9 - April 12, Institut français d'Égypte, 1 Madraset El Huquq El Frensiya, Mounira.