Tips from the culture desk: Politics doesn’t entirely trump art

Perhaps culture isn’t at the forefront of your mind at the start of this particular week. But it would be wrong of us not to point out that some things are happening in Cairo, especially those it would be a shame not to know about.

Psychedelic music

The automatic improvisation music group Procession Toward the Unknown play on Saturday night at 8 pm in Zamalek (3elbt Alwan, 15 Ahmed Heshmat. Tickets LE30, call 01018560510). “We're bringing down the night sky for you,” they say. “Let's align our stars too.”

Surrealist art

There's not much information on it, but an intriguing-looking exhibition called Surrealism: An Egyptian Modern Vision seems to be a low-key contribution to the current trend for looking into Egyptian surrealism (think the ambitious three-day conference in Cairo last November and the upcoming exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris). It opens at the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo’s Opera House Complex on Tuesday at 6 pm.

A couple of films and a talk

Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth isn’t meant to be his best film to date, but the extravagantly skillful Italian director's work is always worth checking out and always better on the big screen, so we’re lucky to have it showing through Wednesday at Zawya. Harvey Keitel and Michael Caine star. There’s also a chance to see Felix Van Groeningen’s Belgian comedy-drama The Unfortunates on Sunday at the Netherlands Flemish Institute in Cairo, which is also where Sandrine Gamblin, director of the AUC’s Middle East Studies Center, is giving a talk about the politics of Shady Abdel Salam’s seminal 1969 film The Mummy on Thursday.

Two contemporary art shows

Sudanese artist Fadlabi’s figurative painting exhibition, Bouyancy, shows at Garden City's Nile Sunset Annex, open on Saturdays 12-6 or by appointment (image up top, read about it here). Pressing Fallacies, an exhibition of mixed-media collage paintings by Ibrahim A. Ahmed, is also showing at Sheikh Zayed's Townhouse West (image below).

And some movement

Finally, affordable dance classes and activities continue at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center. See schedule and prices here.

Or perhaps read some of our recent culture writing, some of which you can see on the right-hand side of this page.