Ahmed Nabil, documentary filmmaker, Alexandria, Egypt

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    • Growing Distance
    • Collapsing
    • Weeping
    • The Trip
    • A Bird on the Bridge
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    • The City Will Pursue You
    • Hoda and Marika
  • Commissioned Films
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    • Villa El Gazayerli
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Placing Edouard in time

19/9/2018

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The following is an excerpt of Alexandria -and its "cosmopolitanism"- encore et toujours. A super interesting article by Hala Halim about Alexandria. It was published recently in ​Politics / Letters and includes a generous review of "17 Fouad Street". Thank you Hala!
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Another one of the new Alexandrian films to receive state funding, here in collaboration with independent film production companies, is the documentary 17 Fouad Street (2014), directed by Ahmed Nabil, which went on to garner several awards. The title is the address of Chaussures Edouard, the shop now run by Nubar, the son of the original Armenian owner, where the décor and footwear have grown retro by default, through a staid indifference to the blandishments of fashion.
I first watched 17 Fouad Street on March 5, 2014, at the Hurriyya Centre for Creativity in Alexandria, a venue that has gone through several transformations, much like the boulevard in downtown Alexandria after which it was named. Rue Fouad Premier (named after the then-king)–it had been Rue Rosette, and “is the most ancient in the city,” as Forster was once to remind us –was renamed Hurriyya (Freedom) Avenue after 1952 (some Alexandrians still use the old name), while the posh Muhammad ‘Ali Club on one of its street corners became the Hurriyya Cultural Palace, later revamped as the Centre for Creativity. The occasion was the screening of three short films among some 12 that had been recipients of Cultural Development Fund (Ministry of Culture) and Hurriyya Centre for Creativity sponsorship (17 Fouad Street, additionally, received Rufy’s support)–and the auditorium was packed with young people.
Here, too, the fact of Alexandria being the second city in the world to witness cinematography was noted in the introductory remarks by Maher Guirguis, visual artist and member of the center’s board of directors, while a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts spoke of the films as “a visual archive” of the city. After the screening, the panelists singled out a common denominator between the three films: an anxiety about the attrition of Alexandrian heritage, a motif of “the fear of the transformations in today’s city.” Monsieur Edouard was read as “a symbol of the cosmopolitan Alexandria that we are losing”; but I found the suggestion that the shoe boxes that form the backdrop against which he sits “are like coffins” an upping of the nostalgia ante that did not do justice to the freshness of the film’s approach.
The 32-minute 17 Fouad Street, set mostly inside the shop, took me by surprise in that at no point is M. Edouard asked to talk about his background, when it was that his Armenian family arrived in Egypt, and so on. It is only the webpage of 17 Fouad Street that a spiel on the history of the Armenian community is provided; there, too, Nabil has written that he directed 17 Fouad Street “under the influence of the French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert and his idea… that you can make a film ‘anywhere and about anyone’ because there is a ‘story’ to be told everywhere.” The very first words spoken in the film are by M. Edouard: his observations, anxiety barely muffled, about the location of military tanks near downtown banks place him squarely in the here and now of the city: Alexandria 2013, in the months after the deposition of President Morsi.
The film places M. Edouard in time, not in a superannuated “outside time” zone. As 17 Fouad Streetobserves him in his shop–equal parts patina and practicality–it registers his quotidian in relation to the passage of time. There are at least two cycles of a day in the life of M. Edouard, demarcated by a black screen–including the morning and evening shifts in the shop, the latter part of the day bookended by the man himself sweeping the threshold of the shop on arrival and street light reflections on the vitrine. M. Edouard himself keeps two calendars on his walls, shuffles and then discards the day pages he’s torn off, as he navigates different temporalities. The one in Arabic script is the standard Egyptian version with each day in the Julian, Coptic and Islamic calendars; and–this the most explicit reference to his background–there’s a calendar in the Armenian script, keeping him tuned into the temporality of community. The only other reference to Alexandria’s Europeanized ethnic heterogeneity is a conversation, on the threshold of the shop, with an older Greek Alexandrian lady, in French, the unsubtitled slivers sifting into the shop apparently alluding to her compatriots who divide their time between Egypt and Greece. Otherwise, M. Edouard converses with clients in a faintly accented Egyptian colloquial tinged with khawagatigrammatical peculiarities.
As most of the clients we see are regulars who return for the tried and tested footwear, the transactions pair conviviality and cosmopolitanism–why not?–with M. Edouard’s canny salesmanship. “You’ve worn this pair for three weeks, right?”–three years, five years comes the answer. He tries to press white shoes on a veiled woman who’s picked a black pair saying she’ll need this too for the hajj; but she’s already been on that and the lesser pilgrimage too, she says, on which occasion she wore a pair from his shop. Another veiled lady with her daughter smilingly says, “all our colleagues at the company used to come here. He really has a name. Sometimes on public transport I hear a woman saying I’m going to Edouard’s.” It’s a sweet-natured infomercial she volunteers, turning towards the camera.
And then there’s what I think of as the Cinema Paradiso moment. The sequence is sparked when M. Edouard asks two Egyptian Alexandrian men spending time with him in the shop, “will you go Hambaring?” It’s dated Alexandrian slang for movie-going, a verb derived from the old Théâtre Alhambra, which eventually began screening films. We deduce it’s a Monday, the day films were changed at Alhambra, M. Edouard remembers, and in many Egyptian cinemas. Fond spectatorship reminiscences unfold: the ticket price that gave you a double bill; favorite genres, especially cowboy and circus movies; make-believe and the abandonment of disbelief; gestural enactments of a memorable scene studded with delectable non sequiturs (“Kirk Douglas and… what’s the name of that blue-eyed actor?”; “But they all have blue eyes”; “No, his were even bluer”). Gradually the mood darkens, registers cinematic attritions at home and abroad under the impact of globalization: such films are no longer made, though you can still watch some of the oldies on satellite; Alexandria’s old cinemas have been closing down (“But why?” “Video–and the dish, that killed it all off”), their names rattled off, Radio, the Strand, and now the Rialto demolished. The scene ends with M. Edouard telling one of the men as he heads for the door, “well, you can continue Hambaring at home,” the words giving way to voice-over of credits from Trapeze (dir. Carol Reed; 1956) that had so enthused one of the men.
​
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Brownbook magazine article.

22/5/2017

1 Comment

 
Quite grateful for the entire team who worked on this feature in Brownbook. You can download the full PDF using the link by the end of of the article or in here.
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The threshold

3/9/2016

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"To access a memory one has to enter the past and activate it through the present. Then there will be no past, nor is the newly activated moment a present time. It is a threshold time lying in the middle of both; thus deep time (past present and future) can now be neglected".​

This is an excerpt of a text that was written by Ahmed Elghoneimy. Elghoneimy is a filmmaker and a close friend of mine. As he mentions, the main references for these very lines are two oeuvres. Henri Bergson's "Matter and Memory", and Jalal Toufic's "Âshûrâ': This Blood Spilled in My Veins". The full text can be read at hwp-everythingelse.com. Ahmed was generous enough to send me a draft of his text earlier. The impact of these lines is still vivid in my memory since the first time I read them. I found the nexus he made with Kiarostami's "Close-Up" charcter Hossain Sabzian very interesting. As the main motive of Sabzian to impersonate Mohsen Makhmalbaf was the fact that he was under the "spell" of his films. In other words, under the spell of his own memory about Makhmalbaf's films. “Tell him The Cyclist is a part of me". 

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Dealing with the memory is always interesting for me. In this context, I would like to shed the light upon some feedback from two kind ladies. They have recently watched "17 Fouad Street" and were generous enough to write me some inspiring emails. Reading and rereading these emails gave me ideas about how we treat our memories. And how we get to believe that certain details really existed in the past. However, maybe they did not.

​The first one came from Madiha Doss. Doss is an Egyptian professor of linguistics. She watched the film online and then wrote me  back the following;

"I found it (a) very subtle picture of Alexandria, in which you avoided the most frequent cliché on this city which is nostalgia and especially nostalgia of things which are of pure imagination sometimes. Your film expresses a delicate sadness emanating from a series of exclusions: the exclusion of an aging Armenian, and his solitude as well as the social exclusion of aging women of the Alexandrian middle class."

The other feedback was that of Helen Garabedian Dodge, who stumbled upon the trailer and had doubts that this might be her father's shop;

"To whom it may concern. I believe it was my father, Wadie Garabedian, and his brother, Dikran, who first started with Elpar Shoes on Rue Fouad.  He started around 1949/50 and ended in 1961. From the outside the shop looks exactly like my father's shop, with the big windows and especially upstairs, all made of wood, where he and his brother and his only worker, Ahmad, worked to make shoes and belts.  My father did very well and was the personal shoe maker to Queen Nariman.  He would go to the palace with the forms or lasts of her feet to make the perfect hand made shoe for her.  I can't believe I am seeing the old shop, but I would love to be able to see the video.  Is there any way you could send me a link?".

I sent her a link to watch the film and I told her that I don't think that this is her father's shop. As I assume I know relatively well the history of "Edourad Chaussures". So she wrote back:

"My father's old shop was called Elpar shoes.  Do you happen to know if Elpar shoes is still there on Rue Fouad?  If it still exists, then obviously your shop is not what was once his.  If not, there is a very good chance.  Do you know the history of your shop?  My sister remember that the front door was on a different side.  Really, I was about fifteen when we left and don't remember that well, but memories do play tricks on us.  It seems so similar.  My sister also said that Atheneos was across the street?  Are you close to Rue Fouad and Rue Nebi Daniel?  No matter what, I think this is all very interesting and I wish you the very best."

I later encountered my Armenian Egyptian friend Gary Bohjelian, who has kindly clarified for me that "Elpar shoes" was actually another Armenian shoes vendor, three or four shops away from "Edourad Chaussures", on the same side of rue Fouad. He, however, confirmed that it was owned by the Armenian family Garabedian. So I got back to Helen with this piece of information and with some curiosity about her background and the history of her family. So she wrote me back the following charming text;

"Ya Ahmad Nabil, so, we left in 1961.  I used to go to the EGC which used to be the English Girls College and which became the El Nasr Girls College.  That way we could keep the same uniforms with the same initials on the pockets.  We lived within walking distance of my dad's shop, Elpar shoes. We lived in the Lebon Building on Rue Fouad, at the corner of Rue Fouad and Rue Sidi Metwali.   My father was Armenian, my mother was English and they met in Alexandria during the war as she was a nurse on the Queen Mary which was a troop ship and used to dock in the harbor of Alexandria.  They met there and got married.  She was very enamored with Alexandria and so that became our home.  Sidi Bishr was our beach.  I loved it all and miss everything about those sublime days in Alex.  Half of my heart is there.  I remember Ramleh Station and all the delicious pastry shops like Pastroudis, Atheneos, Delice, and the Brazilian Coffee Stores!! No place like this on earth!".

She also added;

"I know things have changed a lot and it is not the beautiful city we used to know as kids, but it will always be my home town.  I am now an American and my parents are both gone, but when ever any of my American friends see anything about Alexandria they always send it to me and tell me it's about my city.  I still speak Arabic to a degree, but slowly, and I cook some Arabic food.  My English mother learned to cook Arabic food like a dream and I MISS it terribly. Since leaving Egypt I have never gone back.  I have a wonderful husband and two glorious sons who know a few words of Arabic and would LOVE to see where I grew up".

"To access a memory one has to enter the past and activate it through the present. Then there will be no past, nor is the newly activated moment a present time. It is a threshold time lying in the middle of both; thus deep time (past present and future) can now be neglected".​

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The prophecy of Sameh Nabil

18/4/2016

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The first time I was pushed to think of myself as a "documentary" filmmaker was during a work trip in Siwa oasis in 2010. On that trip I was working on a short documentary about the visit of a set of school students to the oasis and there exploration of the traditions there. I was accompanied by a friend of mine who helped me with recording sound while shooting. His name is Sameh Nabil. During one of the short breaks while shooting, Sameh mentioned that I should consider working more with the documentary medium. I remember he said something related to my "persistence for research". This was quite enlightening for me. Later on I thanked him several times for this revelation.

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Sameh Nabil in Siwa

In 2011, I moved with Sarah to Arles, France, for six months. It was an important experience for us. When we were back by the beginning of September I had an idea for a feature documentary already quite developed in my mind. The idea behind the "The City Will Pursue You" was born within this period. I called home Mohamad El-Hadidi and told him about the project, and he decided to support me as a producer, DOP and later on even as a character in the film himself.
On the other hand Sameh was the main sound recorder on set for over four years of shooting. We never had a contract with him. It was as simple as calling him and fixing a date.
I owe Sameh a lot. But most importantly I owe him the positive energy of his prophecy in 2010.

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