Spring cleaning for Cairo

Fest's new board shakes up old guard

November and December saw two fewer film festivals than usual when Cairo and Damascus cancelled their events due to the turmoil caused by the Arab Spring’s recent uprisings. Cairo, the oldest film fest in the Middle East and Africa, was headed for its 35th edition when its board decided that Egypt’s unsettled state, along with government restructuring, made it prudent to postpone for one year while they regrouped and decided how to proceed.

Part of the decision resulted from major changes made to the Ministry of Culture’s oversight of Egyptian fests, now far more independent following Hosni Mubarak’s fall earlier this year and the intermittent purging of his cronies. In the past few months several new fests have been proposedand older ones reformed, promising a far more vibrant festival landscape than before.

Though guests were always well-looked after at the Cairo Fest, it could be a frustrating place where disorganization in some departments and mixed-bag programming made it feel like it was struggling to hold onto its A-list status. Presumably some of the problems stemmed from the control exerted by the Ministry of Culture, which, post-Revolution, has restructured the way fests are accredited and allows them a far more independent hand than before.

Since February and at least as of November, each fest had to get approval from a newly organized board formed by the National Film Center, which passed on its approval to Emad Abou-Ghazi, the Minister of Culture, whose office funded the Center, which covered half a