Tips from the culture desk: From aesthetic citizenship to an unmade film

Alongside various international Palestine-themed events currently happening, Palestine is very present in Egypt’s cultural events this week. Check out our recommended films, talks and other events below. 

The Wanted 18 screening — Sunday

Shown to acclaim in Cairo last year as part of the AFAC film week, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo are showing it once more as part of their ongoing Palestine month of events commemorating the Nakba. By Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan, it tells the ridiculous true story of when, after the First Intifada in 1987, the people of Palestinian town Beit Sahour defied the Israeli occupation by buying 18 cows to become self-sufficient in their production but their resulting collective farm was declared “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel." The documentary mixes animation, archival footage and interviews to re-tell the tale of the most wanted cows in the Middle East. It’s both a moving and serious story that is also hilarious.

May 22 at 7:30 pm at the NVIC, 1 Mahmoud Azmy Street, Zamalk. The event is free but early attendance is recommended due to seating limitations.

Uriel Orlow’s Unmade Film presentation — Sunday

As an extension of CIC’s current exhibition Chronic, artist Uriel Orlow presents his publication Unmade Film in the form of a performative reading reflecting the scope of his multimedia work of the same name. Topics include trauma, haunting, the work of psychologists under occupation, experimental film, and the historical context of Deir Yassin. Deir Yassin, the starting point for Unmade Film, is a village near Jerusalem depopulated in a 1948 massacre by Zionist paramilitaries and later used to house Kfar Sha'ul, a psychiatric clinic initially specialised in treating Holocaust survivors. Developed through research and workshops with psychiatrists, musicians, historians, actors and pupils in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, Unmade Film is a collection of audiovisual works structured around a necessary but impossible film.

CIC also currently have a call for participants for an unusual collective filmmaking workshop with Kerstin Scheoedinger, taking place in the rup-up to next year’s PhotoCairo.

22 May at 7pm, in Arabic and English, 4th floor, 22 Abdel Khalek Sarwat Street, downtown Cairo.

As I Open my Eyes release — from Wednesday 

Much anticipated Tunisian film As I Open My Eyes finally hits Zawya’s screen after an initial screening during Oshtoora Music and Arts Festival at Easter. The award-winning, festival-hopping debut feature from Leyla Bouzeid is set in the summer of 2010 in Tunis, and we follow 18-year-old Farah (Baya Medhaffer), the lead singer of fictional indie band Joujma, as they struggle to find rehearsal and performance spaces due to their politically critical lyrics. But that's not Farah's only struggle, for she is a rebellious free spirit seeking to break free of the middle-class conservative environment maintained by her mother (singer Ghalia Benali). The band’s original music, made specially for the film by Iraqi-Syrian musician and composer Khayam Allami, is inspired by folk music from the city of El Kef and boasts lyrics by Tunisan writer Ghassan Amami.  Read our review here.

May 25 to June 5. Follow the event for more details.  

Aesthetic Citizenship — Thursday 

Continuing the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo’s Palestine month and drawing on fieldwork in Palestine/Israel, Kiven Strohm of the AUC’s anthropology department outlines a form of “aesthetic citizenship” that emerges in the work of Palestinian contemporary visual art through the spaces it creates, which allow spectators — Palestinian and Jewish — to imagine alternative worlds and other possible ways of being and commonality.

6 pm. Doors open at 5:30 and close at 6:15 or earlier if full capacity is reached. 1 Dr. Mahmoud Azmi Street, Zamalek, Cairo. Facebook event here.

Goethe Film Week — starts Thursday

The Goethe’s annual Film Week starts at 7 pm on May 26 with a free concert by the band Hawas at its downtown headquarters. Taking place in Alexandria and Cairo, the festival shows a mix of German and Arabic films, including Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk’s Out on the Street (June 1 in Alexandria, June 2 in Cairo) and the Cairo premiere of a short film called Dry Hot Summer (2015) by Sherif al-Bendary (Cairo, May 26).

Here is the full program (in German).

The Nile Choir premiere — Saturday

Since the start of April, the acclaimed regional music initative the Nile Project has brought together amateurs and professional musicians to collectively write and compose an original operatta, titled The Tale of the Clouds & The Nile. The operetta, which resulted from the six week workshop facilitated by Salam Yousry (The Choir Project, Tamyy Theater troupe), tells the story of legendary creatures living on the banks of the river as they overcome a drought.

May 28 at 8 pm, AUC Falaki Theater, Falaki Street, downtown Cairo.