Ahmed Nabil, documentary filmmaker, Alexandria, Egypt

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  • Home
  • Bio
  • Filmography
    • Growing Distance
    • Collapsing
    • Weeping
    • The Trip
    • A Bird on the Bridge
    • 17 Fouad Street
    • The City Will Pursue You
    • Hoda and Marika
  • Commissioned Films
    • Visitors of the City
    • Villa El Gazayerli
  • Podcast
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سطر سخيف في نهاية صفحة ممتعة

22/3/2022

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بعد مدة تقترب من ثلاث سنوات أقوم بإنهاء عملي في مركز الچزويت الثقافي بالإسكندرية، كمدير لمركز الدراسات السينمائية، بعد خلاف مع إدارة المركز الحالية

خلال عام ٢٠١٨ اختارني الأب فادي جورج - مدير المركز السابق- لكتابة مشروع إعادة إحياء مدرسة السينما والتي كانت قد توقفت بعد توقف الدورة السادسة متعثرة. وهي المدرسة التي أدين لها بدراسة صناعة الأفلام في الدورة الثانية بين عامي ٢٠٠٥ و٢٠٠٧. وعليه قمت بتصميم فكرة مركز الدراسات السكندرية وما يندرج تحته من أنشطة وأهمها مدرسة السينما متضمنًا المنهج وطريقة إختيار الطلبة وتحديد الميزانية المطلوبة. كما قمت باختيار الأستاذ بيتر عادل ليكون مساعدًا لي وبدأنا العمل فعليًا في صيف عام ٢٠١٩ لاختيار طلبة الدفعة السابعة بعد توفير الميزانية بسبب دعم كريم من السفارة الأمريكية بالقاهرة. بدأ العمل واستمر في إطار من التعاون شملنا به جميع العاملين بالمركز

قُبيل نهاية العمل مع الدفعة الثامنة عام ٢٠٢١ تم تغيير في إدارة مركز الچزويت الثقافي بالإسكندرية. وأصبح واضحًا بعد عدد من المواقف وجود تغيير جذري في سياسة إدارة المركز. وهو ما أدى إلى تعليقي للعمل يوم ١ فبراير ٢٠٢٢ مع الدفعة التاسعة وتلى هذا عدد من المواقف والرسائل المتبادلة بين جميع الأطراف

الوضع الحالي يمكن تلخيصه في توقف عمل المدرسة بعد إعفائي من مهام عملي يوم ٢١ فبراير واستقالة مساعدي الأستاذ بيتر عادل ورحيل جميع طلبة الدفعة التاسعة من المدرسة بعد إرسالهم تسعة رسائل مسببة لإدارة المركز. وعليه، فإنني أعلن إنهاء عملي في مدرسة السينما في مركز الچزويت الثقافي في الإسكندرية اليوم بعد ٥٠ يومًا من متواليات الضغط النفسي ونوبات الغضب والحزن. علماً بأنه تم إعلامي بالتخطيط لجلسة مع "مستشار فض نزاعات" وهي جلسة مرحب بها على كل حال رغم تأخرها وتأجيلها لأكثر من مرة بدون سبب واضح. ورغم عدم وجود "نزاع" من الأساس

أود أن أتوجه بالشكر لزملائي من العاملين في المركز واللذين لولا مساندتهم لي واحتضانهم لمدرسة السينما خلال الدفعتين السابقتين لما خرجت النتيجة بهذا الشكل وأخص بالذكر الأساتذة عماد عياد وسامح فوزي وعصام لبيب ومينا ملاك وسوزان الألفي وچينا إميل ومجدولين سمعان وأحمد رمضان ومروان شعبان

كما أود التوجه بالشكر والعرفان لجميع الأساتذة والأصدقاء اللذين تبرعوا بوقتهم - وبأجورهم أحيانًا - ليقوموا بلقاء أو بالتدريس لطلبة الثلاث دفعات. وأخص بالذكر فيهم هؤلاء الذين آمنوا بشكل كبير بالمدرسة وبطلبتها وبمشاريعهم وعلى رأسهم الأساتذة والأصدقاء محمد زيدان ومحمد الحديدي ومحمد صلاح وإسلام كمال وهند بكر وتامر السعيد وعلي العدوي وسامح نبيل ومايكل فوزي وهشام جبر وماريو محارب وعماد ماهر وأحمد الغنيمي وأحمد زيان ومارك لطفي ومحمد سمير ومصطفى يوسف وماجد نادر وأحمد ناجي ونادية كامل وندى رياض ومي زايد وميا أنادورتا وفلمنج لينجس (من الدنمارك) وروس كوفمان (من الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية) ومريم نعوم وشريف البنداري وأحمد عبد الله السيد وحسن الجريتلي ومحمد المصري الذي فاق كرمه بالوقت والمجهود والدقة في العمل ما كنا نحلم به كإدارة مدرسة وكطلبة

وجود بيتر عادل كان صمام الأمان لي ولطلبة المدرسة على مدار السنوات الثلاثة الماضية. فعليًا كنت قد اخترته للعمل معي كمساعد ولكن انتهى به الأمر في مكانة الشريك. وأصبحت عاجزًا عن تصور أي مشروع لي في المستقبل بدونه. كنت محظوظًا باختياره للعمل معي في إدارة مدرسة السينما وتعلمت منه أكثر مما يعتقد

أعتذر لطلبة الدفعة التاسعة التي لم أتمكن من أن أنهي عملي معهم لأسباب خارجة عن إرادتي. لقد ساهمت في اختيار كل واحد منكم للدراسة وأنا على يقين بإمكانياتكم. كما تعلمون، لدي التزام ناحية استكمال مشروع الدراسة الخاص بكم طالما تمسكتم به. وسوف أحاول استكمال هذا المشروع بشكل مستقل بدعم من الأصدقاء والمؤسسات الذين تطوعوا بالفعل للدعم وربما نتمكن من صنع مشاريع تخرج أيضًا

مركز الچزويت الثقافي بالإسكندرية هو أحد أهم مراكز النشاط السينمائي في مصر وربما أقدمها وأكثرها تميزًا. تعلمت فيه وأجد نفسي مرتبط به عاطفيًا بشكل كبير. عملي فيه لسنوات سوف يبقى وسامًا على صدري لكونه أيضًا أحد أهم المساحات العامة التي قامت بتوفير نسائم الحرية والإبداع على مدار عقود للجميع في المدينة بدون تمييز. وسوف أظل مدينًا له بما لا يمكنني تسديده. أتذكر بكل العرفان وصادق الود من عاصرتهم من باعثي النهضة الثقافية في الإسكندرية من خلاله؛ السيد فادي چورچ أطال الله في عمره والأب فايز سعد اليسوعي، رحمه الله

وددت بهذا النص أن أقوم بتسجيل بعض الحقائق التي أدت إلى نهاية هذا الفصل من علاقتي بمدرسة مدرسة السينما في مركز الجزويت الثقافي بالإسكندرية. عل هذا التسجيل يكون ذا نفع للباحثين والمهتمين بتاريخ الثقافة السينمائية ومدارس السينما في مصر. كما أقوم بهذا النص بطي صفحة كان سطرها الأخير سخيفًا ولكنها كانت في مجملها شديدة المتعة والنفع لي، آملاً أن تكون قد كانت أيضًا نافعة وممتعة لآخرين غيري
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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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The detention of Mohamad El-Hadidi

1/1/2018

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Kindly scroll down for updates

​1 January 2018
​I would like to thank everyone who reached out for information about the situation of my close friend Mohamad El-Hadidi during the past couple of days. It is confirmed that El-Hadidi is currently detained for four days after being arrested by police forces outside of Alexandria court last Saturday, 30 December 2017. It is also confirmed that he was there to attend the public sentence hearing of the recent case of the lawyer Mahienour El-Massry.
El-Hadidi is a photographer, DOP, filmmaker and producer. He is one of the most eminent figures in the filmmaking society in Alexandria. He is also the co-founder of Rufy's Films and the producer of my last two documentaries. 
Disregarding the difficulties of the last two nights, many of El-Hadidi's family members, friends and admirers have hopes of his release soon. However, your prayers and vigilance are much solicited and sought for.

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Mohamad El-Hadidi in a cinematic talk in September 2017.

2 January 2018 - Update #1 
In a surprising turn of events, the investigations into the incident have suddenly been turned into a court case. The case was looked into this morning in front of an emergency National Security court and the verdict has been postponed until the judge hears the testimony of the officer who claimed that Mohamad El-Hadidi, and two others, were aggressive with the police forces.
The postponement means one more week of detention for El-Hadidi who happened to be among the crowd in front of the courthouse on Saturday 30 December 2017 as previously mentioned. The postponement also puts the career of El-Hadidi in a critical situation as he has been recently selected to take part in two important cinematic events in Europe during 2018.
His first feature fiction film project "The Last Night" has been recently selected to represent Egypt in the annual lab for French speaking filmmakers Meditalents. The Facebook page of the respected French Mediterranean institution has announced its selection this afternoon. In addition to that, Mohamad was selected to be part of this years Berlinale Talents, the prestigious annual summit and networking platform of the Berlin International film festival. The Talents are very strict with their selection each year and they invite only 250 creatives from allover the world. Both the Berlinale and Meditalents are interested purely in the art of Cinema and creative talents, not political activists or individuals who can be a threat to "national security".
I call upon our friends to spread the word about the developments of the story of El-Hadidi as much as possible. I ask those who have personal connections to media providers to offer help for more exposure and guarantee of transparency regarding his case.
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El-Hadidi, far left, during the last El Gouna Film festival.

9 January 2018 - Update #2 
This morning witnessed the announcement of a not-guilty verdict for Mohamad El-Hadidi and his two colleagues which means an acquittal from all charges. We expect El-Hadidi to be released tonight or tomorrow. 
On behalf of myself, and many of his friends and family members, I would like to thank all the supporters of Mohamad's case during the past nightmarish eleven days. 
Now we can celebrate the new year :)
​

11 January 2018 - Update #3 - Closure 
He is out.
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