Egyptian cityscapes: Messages from the Sea and Domestic Tourism II
26.10.2010 - Using different approaches and departure points, Messages from the Sea and Domestic Tourism II offer remarkable snapshots of
modern Egypt, focusing on Alexandria and Cairo respectively.
Messages from the Sea
was selected as the Egyptian entry for the Best Foreign-Language
Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. It marks Daoud Abdel Sayed's
return behind the camera after an eight-year absence, and tells the
story of Yehya (Asser Yassin), a medical student who is painfully
self-conscious about his speech impediment, who returns to his
native city of Alexandria following the death of his
mother.
Abdel Sayed began his film career as assistant director to
acclaimed Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine. The
Vagabonds (1985) established him as one of the
pioneers of the New Realism school of Egyptian cinema, which
appeared in the 1980s as a revival of the wave of realism that
dominated Egyptian cinema in the 1960s. Abdel Sayed's films have
won several awards, including Best Director at the Biennale des
Cinémas Arabes in Paris for Al Kit-Kat (1992), the
Silver Pyramid at the Cairo International Film Festival for Searching for Sayyid
Marzuq (1991), and Best Arabic Film at the Cairo International
Film Festival for Land of
Fear (1999).
In
Messages from the Sea
, the city of Alexandria, which once
hosted a multi-cultural society including Egyptians, Greeks,
Italians, Christians, Muslims and Jews, has succumbed to a new form
of Islamic-driven capitalism. Personified by the ruthless landlord
(
Salah Abdullah)
who seeks to evict Yehya from his apartment in order to build a
mall, the new Alexandria ignores its harmonious past and rich
complexity.
In addition to a cast of inspired actors,
the cinematography of Messages from the Sea is
particularly alluring. Ahmed Morsy is equally at ease rendering
vibrant streets, fish markets, and the roaring sea crashing on
chiseled rocks, as he is the elegant homes of the city's
aristocracy, dimly lit and filled with antiques and objets d'art.
The film succeeds in portraying a metropolis that has become an
anachronistic throwback to a bygone era, aggressively contemporary
yet at the same time resolutely cosmopolitan.
In contrast, Maha Maamoun's captivating Domestic Tourism II
focuses on the city of Cairo, especially on the often-gratuitous
appearance of the pyramids in Egyptian film. Relying exclusively on
footage found in Egyptian movies from the 1950s to the present day,
the film won the Jury's Prize at the Sharjah Art Biennial in
2009.
Cairo-based visual artist Maamoun grew up surrounded by some of the
most photographed subjects on the planet. The burnished postcards
of the capital's landmarks, from the Pyramids to the Mogamma'
el-Tahrir, encouraged her to explore the essence of her hometown.
Her first photographic series, Cairoscapes (2001-2003),
consisted of panoramic, eye-level, close-up shots of women's
dresses against the backdrop of Cairo, and provided an intimate
portrayal of life on the streets of the bustling city. Maamoun then
moved on to capture some of Cairo's monumental buildings, such as
the iconic Mogamma', as part of Going Places
(2003).
2005's Domestic
Tourism consisted of digitally manipulated images that present
a slightly distorted image of Egypt's tourist attractions. The
series took its inspiration from the polished postcards featuring
Nile boats at sunset, the posh hotels on the Mediterranean Sea and
snaps of downtown Cairo at night. Its follow-up of sorts, Domestic Tourism II, is a
video collage that shows how the Pyramids of Giza are embedded in
the narratives of classic and recent Egyptian films.
The film starts with the most recent scenes Maamoun collected, from
the 2000s, which bring to the fore Egyptian cinema's superficial
engagement in social and political issues. The tone of Domestic Tourism II
becomes darker as it moves backwards through the 90s, 80s and 70s,
with cinema's deeper engagement with harsh political realities.
Tension is then released with celebratory scenes of social glee
from the 60s and 50s, where the pyramids act mostly as a backdrop
to a celebratory middle class. Maamoun then shifts back to the
present, in what can be seen as a pyramidal structure. In the
process, she succeeds in offering a immersive glimpse of half a
century of Egyptian films, albeit one that forsakes traditional
narrative and relies instead on cinematic collage.
Ziad Nawfal