throw its seventh session, the El Gouna Film Festival celebrates the locations of Egyptian films through the exhibition “Egyptian Cities that Embraced Cinema” by film researcher Ibrahim Messiha, as an innovative visual exhibition that documents the cities that witnessed the filming of Egyptian films. He chose 10 governorates that had the largest share of filming, including Cairo, Alexandria, Fayoum, Sinai, and the Red Sea.
Visitors to the exhibition can view film clips and the locations where they were filmed in each governorate, such as the film “Duaa Al-Karawan,” which was filmed in Fayoum. Messiha said that the idea began when he was thinking of holding a festival in his hometown of Fayoum (southwest of Cairo) and wanted to limit the number of films filmed in the governorate. He thought about the rest of the governorates, embarking on a journey that he began in 2003 due to the lack of documented information at the time.
But Masiha completed the idea with his daughter Marina, a pharmacist and artist who participated last year in “CineGouna for Emerging Talents”, who told Marianne Khoury, the festival’s artistic director, what her father had achieved in this regard, and Marianne Khoury found in it an exhibition that chronicles cinema and the places where it was filmed.
Masiha points out that “despite the long history of Egyptian cinema and the presence of more than 5,000 films, there are only 300 or 400 films that he was able to find copies of, and he found that Fayoum alone had 80 films filmed, while Alexandria may have had several times that number, and Luxor and Aswan had more than 30 films. His journey to document this extended for more than 20 years, and he communicated for it with artists such as Madiha Yousry and producers and directors including Ramses Marzouk, Samir Auf and Khaled Youssef.
According to Marina Messiha, many films were shot in Egyptian oases, such as “A Wife from Paris” by Nabila Obeid, which was shot in the Paris Oasis in the New Valley Governorate in the Egyptian Western Desert, and “Kunooz” in the Kharga Oasis, also starring Nabila Obeid, while “Araq al-Balah” and “Abu Ali” by Karim Abdel Aziz were shot in the Dakhla Oasis. “Tamar Henna” was shot in Fayoum, and “Al-Mumia” in Luxor, in the real locations of its events.
The Red Sea and Sinai governorates were chosen as filming locations for several films, including “Devil’s Island,” “Astakouza,” and “Shorts, T-Shirt, and Cap,” while “Al-Mashbouh” was shot in Port Said and “Shatea Al-Marah” in Ismailia. According to Marina, several films were shot in Cairo, including “Hayat Aw Moot” and “Bab Al-Hadid.” Alexandria also hosted the filming of films such as “Abi Fawq Al Shagara”, “Raseef No. 5”, “Struggle in the Port”, “Ice Cream in Gleem”, “Saie’ Bahr”, and “Alexandria Why”.
In a similar context, the festival is hosting a second exhibition by photographer Mohamed Bakr (87 years old), nicknamed “Sheikh of Photographers”, who began his career as a film photographer since his childhood, accompanying his late father, artist Hussein Bakr, whose name is associated with photographing the most beautiful shots, so the son followed in his father’s footsteps and photographed his first film in 1956, which was the film “Samara” by Tahia Carioca.
Bakr said : “Tahia Carioca was a good person with everyone and she insisted on me as a photographer in the film “Samara” even though director Hassan Al-Saify objected to me because of my young age, as I was a high school student, and with the first shots I took, he was convinced of my competence, and my journey began.”
Bakr explains the reasons for the purity and clarity of the images in his exhibition, saying: “We were shooting with high technology so that the image would live on, and during the shooting my father used to say that it must live on for future generations. I preserved it and created an archive that includes the years of its production and the entire film crew, with the help of my son, the director of photography and professor at the Cinema Institute and director of the National Cinema Center, Hussein Bakr.”
published oct 28, 2024.
