Video | As Far as the Eye Can See: 10 Years of Storytelling

As far as the eye can see, we are making our way through Egypt with a camera and sound recorder. In this quick retrospective journey through our video archives, we present you with some of the major milestones we’ve crossed in ten years of Mada Masr video production. Sound and image have played an essential role in our news coverage, representation of the world around us, and documentation of the major changes and smaller, subtler shifts that Egypt has been going through over the last decade.

We started our video production journey in 2013 by pointing the lens at ourselves first, asking citizens on the streets what the word Mada means to them. And we stayed on the streets to cover the violence, mass demonstrations and celebrations taking place throughout that period. When the streets emptied once again, we turned our attention to the countless dimensions of the world around us, from personalities and their stories to places and a wide array of issues of concern.

Egypt’s crises were economic as much as they were political over the past ten years, with taxes exponentially rising and the pound decreasing in value multiple times, restructuring the local market again and again and inevitably weakening Egyptians’ purchasing power. Among other economic indicators, we covered the 2017 rise in local cigarette prices, which nevertheless failed to deter smokers from puffing away their frustration. One of our videos narratively broke down how the state supports the rich through its taxation system, and, in his popular weekly series, Big Brother told us how to eradicate poverty, satirizing the state and its supporters’ approaches and highlighting the country’s issues as he saw them.

In the lead-up to the 2018 presidential elections, the streets were filled with campaign posters, so we spoke with the calligraphers and poster designers to learn more about their profession and how it has been changing. This came as an extension of our documentation of handcraft industries in our Beyond the Factory series, in which we’ve profiled copperworkers, dyers, papyrus paper makers, tilemakers, potters and other traditional craftspeople.

It was also in 2018 that the state began demolishing Cairo’s Maspero Triangle as part of larger plans to redevelop informally constructed areas, so we moved to document the last days of the Triangle and listened to the residents whose lives were irrevocably reshaped by their sudden forced eviction. We covered clashes between the authorities and Warraq Island residents, who were also forcibly displaced and given meager to no compensation for the appropriation of their residential properties, leading to a struggle on the Nile. Prior to the latest demolition campaign the state has been waging on historic Cairo neighborhoods and cemeteries, we documented what had remained at the time of the Arab al-Yassar neighborhood beneath Cairo’s citadel. In another treatment of urban development issues, we tackled the question of building violations, explaining the history behind the phenomenon in Egypt, what drives people to resort to informal building and the legal ramifications of having done so.

We’ve also taken an interest in cultivated land and our relationship to it and its crops, taking a close look at cotton, prickly pear, hibiscus and mulberry crops, among others, as well as the practices of growing, harvesting, and baking one’s own wheat. The humble loaf of Egyptian bread also featured in an Avant-Titre episode about bread in Egyptian cinema, part of a Mada dossier on the government’s intention to raise the price of subsidized loaves.

With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, we felt a need to document this period of isolation, which was unlike any other we’ve experienced before. We documented laborers’ experiences on the ground and neighbors congregating on rooftops and launched a series of creative video essays on personal experiences as lived and felt by their makers during this exceptional period.

On the presumed margins, we’ve portrayed those who challenge social stereotypes, telling the stories of women who have taken on professions and lived lives in ways deemed to be the domain of men and, conversely, of men who’ve broken gender molds to pursue what they love. We’ve followed athletes, men and women, and their stories of success despite their distance from the spotlight and recorded the experiences of disabled people in our Disability as Possibility series.

We’ve been roaming in all directions, documenting life beyond the mainstream urban centers. We visited an artist in a traditional oasis home and the Nubian community in Cairo’s Bulaq Dakrur after having taken the Nubia Express train on its annual journey to the south. On the Mediterranean coast, we rode Alexandria’s trams, conversing with their crews and passengers, and visited al-Mex Beach with its historic residential chalets under threat of eviction and removal. We spoke with al-Mex’s fishermen and those fishing on the Nile and northern lakes. In the heart of Cairo, we witnessed life on a Kit Kat houseboat before they were all removed by the state and paid farewell to the Giza Zoo and Orman botanical gardens before their gates were shut to the public for development.

We’ve witnessed the lives of those who’ve fled to Egypt in search of stability, learning about the experiences of Ethiopians, Sudanese, Syrians, and Yemenis living among us.

We’ve also filmed interviews with influential figures in politics and culture, seeking to widen the scope of dialogue and allowing you to hear from them in their own words. 

All of these perspectives and more are available to view on our YouTube channel, which hosts the full archive of our video productions. Follow the channel and keep up with our latest work here.

And now, we are pleased to present you with a short video titled As far as the eye can see — a retrospective overview of Mada Masr’s ten years of video production in a 10-minute journey. To watch an even more condensed overview, follow this link to our YouTube channel.

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