Filmmakers discuss cinema industry problems and solutions

CAIRO – 27 November 2017: The “Egyptian Cinema Challenges” seminar took place on November 26 as part of the 39th Cairo International Film Festival.

The seminar was hosted by the cinema critic Khaled Mahmoud, who began by admitting that Egyptian cinema is currently suffering from an obvious crisis. “The invulnerable proof of this huge crisis is the absence of the Egyptian movie from the festival‘s international competition for the first time in the festival’s history, it is a lump in our throats that will not heal easily.”

Mahmoud recounted that the Egyptian cinema industry is currently facing a lot of challenges that need quick action from all Egyptian filmmakers. The importance of this was relayed to a group of prominent filmmakers who were in attendance.

“The government started to pay attention to Egyptian cinema 3 years ago, from my point of view the problem is not in the Ministry of Culture or the filmmakers, the problem lies in the other ministries which don’t respond to our demands” Mahmoud added.

The Ministry of Culture made plans for many projects that were designed to uplift the Egyptian cinema industry, such as establishing an Egyptian cinema industry holding company, an Egyptian cinema support fund and mechanizing the ticket window. However, the implementation of all these projects is the duty of the Ministry of Finance.

The Egyptian script writer Medhat el-Adl El-Adl explained that for around 30 years, Egyptian governments have viewed the cinema as a pastime, something unimportant; the current cinema industry crisis is the result of such a view. “Since president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power the filmmakers started to feel that the government began to pay more attention not to the cinema only but to Egypt’s soft powers in general which the cinema is an important part of, this was clear when the president met the Egyptian artists as soon as he came to power” El-Adl said.

One of the major causes of the industry’s problems, as recounted by El-Adl is the existence of illegal satellite channels that screen new films without paying for the rights. This forced legitimate channels into not buying Egyptian movies, which resulted in major losses for most movies, which in turn negatively harms the whole industry.

“I talked about the cinema industry’s problems in a seminar at the World Youth Forum; this seminar was attended by President Sisi who asked me to make a committee to solve these problems, promising that the government will totally support the committee recommendations logistically, but without funding them.”

El-Adl added that the committee held a meeting and came up with some recommendations. “The state must bear in mind that art in general and film particularly is a defense line that is able to combat terrorism, extremism and destructive thoughts.”

Khaled Abdel Gelil, the Minister of Culture Counsellor for Cinema Affairs said that they have already presented the Egyptian cabinet with a paper that contains all the recommendations and suggestions to solve the Egyptian cinema industry’s problems. “A group of prominent filmmakers participated in the preparation of another paper presented to the Presidency, including Gaby Khoury, Esaad Younis, Hisham Abdel Khalek, Mohamed Hefzy, Sherif Mandour among others.”

This paper contains a group of decisions designed to reinvigorate the cinema industry by combating all its problems, such as hacking, the facilitation of shooting foreign movies, and by supporting Egyptian cinema through treating cinema halls as industrial entities, the mechanization of cinema tickets and so on.

“The ministry of culture performed its role and presented the projects plans and suggestions, the implementation of all these is the job of the Egyptian state” Abdel Gelil added.

“The massive Egyptian Cinema industry crisis could be terminated easily by a presidential phone call that says just one phrase ‘Pay attention to the Egyptian cinema’” said the veteran Egyptian director Magdy Ahmed Aly.

Aly stressed that the Egyptian filmmakers should convince the government to what extent the cinema is important tool in combating terrorism. ‘’Fighting terrorism is not done by killing terrorists, because the solution is not to kill terrorists but to prevent them from being terrorists in the first place, to protect them from being brain washed, clear their brains from the extremism thoughts ,this will happen through the cinema.’’

Terrorism, as recounted by Aly, comes as result of the lack of art and the weakness of culture. Aly added that the European Union previously desired to grant the Egyptian cinema €20 million to support the industry but the money was never received because the government didn’t pay enough attention to cinema. “The cinema industry consists of three main elements which are production, distribution and cinema halls; the main problem is in the cinema halls” Aly explained.

Aly said that Egypt only has about 500 cinemas, centralised in Cairo and the other big governorates, there are some Egyptian governorates with no Cinemas at all. “We need at least two or three times this number, China built 10,000 cinemas in one year, all what we need from the government to ask China to help us in this issue, and give us the huge number of abandoned historical palaces and cultural places to use them to establish cinema halls” Aly suggested.

 
“The Egyptians were brain washed for more than 40 years to believe that cinema is something religiously forbidden that was clear when people used to celebrate the retirement of any actress and the wearing of a veil” El-Adl recounted. He added that society should review the way it look at the arts in general and at cinema in particular.

“One of the major solutions that will enhance Egyptian cinema is establishing unions for the movies producers, distributors and cinema owners” said the cinema producer Hussein el-Kala.

The producer Gaby Khoury said that the total revenues of all the movies displayed in Egyptian cinemas in 2016 was $8 million. Egyptian movies achieved 55 percent of this number, the remainder being from foreign movies. “This number is very small, a sugar factory could yield it in one month, our main concern should be how to maximise the Egyptian cinema industry” Khoury added.

“The number of copies of the foreign movies in the Egyptian cinemas must increase” said the cinema distributor Antwan Zend.

“We should convince the President, the government and the public that Egyptian national security depends on having strong Egyptian cinema industry” said Mervat Abou Ouf, cinema legislations professor. Abou Ouf added that we have in the constitution great articles that protect and enhance the cinema industry but unfortunately we don’t apply them. “We have to effectively apply the cinema laws.”
The seminar resulted in a number of recommendations:
1. Financial support to the National Cinema Council of 50 million L.E yearly
2. Encouraging the establishment of more cinemas
3. The prevention of piracy
4. Reducing shooting fees in public areas
5. Encouraging Egyptian channels to purchase the rights to Egyptian movies
6. Establishing a producers, distributors and cinema owners union
7. Increasing the number of copies of foreign movies
8. Increasing the tickets prices of the foreign movies and its taxes and direct this increase to be added to Egyptian cinema support fund
9. Build a strong strategy to convince the government that the Egyptian cinema is an effective tool to enhance the national security
10. Educate the new generations that cinema is an important part of our cultur