New poster of AIWFF's 3rd edition exposed

CAIRO – 22 January 2019: The official poster for Aswan International Women's Film Festival has been exposed. The festival is set to run from Feb. 20-26.

The poster is colorful and eye-catchy, as it illustrates the distinctive colors of African nature.

The poster, designed by Alexandrian artist Hisham Ali, highlights a number of important elements, designing the logo of the festival in the form of a woman's face.

The basic element of this poster is derived from the face of a girl whose features resemble the faces of Egyptian women with distinctive features, and also portrays the environment in Aswan, most notably the color of the Nile.

Hisham Ali is a 26-year-old graphic designer and visual artist. He received a number of awards in the field of design, including the Best Design Award in Alexandria from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2010.

The Aswan International Film Festival for Women's Cinema announced that it will honor during the third edition's opening ceremony veteran artist Mohsena Tawfik and star Menna Shalabi.

In addition, five women who have many artistic contributions will also be honored during the festival’s opening ceremony.

Aswan International Film Festival for Women’s Cinema is the first Egyptian film festival specializing in offering workshops for youth in Aswan.

So far, 125 young males and females have been trained in film making workshops by Egyptian and international professional film makers.

These workshops produced five documentary films screened during the final ceremony.

The Aswan International Women Film Festival announced holding a number of workshops during the third round of the festival.

Manager of the festival's workshops, Sayed Abdel Khalek, said "The workshops will be held on February 13-19, 2019.

They aim at enhancing youth's role in the society via giving them the opportunity to express themselves and their visions through cinema as one of the modern means of expression.

Children and youths, who are living in Aswan and aging from 7 to 35 years old, are encouraged to apply for the workshops."

"The third round of the festival will present a workshop by screenwriter Wissam Soliman," Abdel Khalek added.

Soliman wrote a number of films including "In Heliopolis Flat", "The Best of Times" and "Factory Girl". The workshop aims at training youths to write a screenplay from scratch until the final draft.

The projects will be discussed during the concluding session of the workshop.

"The festival will also organize a documentary workshop by director Mahmoud Soliman who directed and produced a number of short films and documentaries that were awarded more than 65 prizes in various film festivals around the world.

His films include "We Have Never Been Kids" that was awarded 16 prizes. His workshop will aim at training youths on documentary film making from scratch until producing a short or long documentary," Abdel Khalek continued.

Also, the festival will hold an animation workshop by Professor Ashraf Mahdy. The workshop aims at training youths, from 16-35 years old, to implement a number of techniques on the paintings of a pioneer Egyptian female painter, According to Abdel Khalek.

Additionally, the festival will hold another animation workshop, organized in cooperation with Jesuit Animation School of Cairo and held by producer, director and founder of Jesuit Animation School Ibrahim Saad. The workshop aims at training children, from 7 to 16 years old, to make animation films through special and simple techniques.

The workshops also include another documentary workshop to be held by young director Aida el-Kashef. The workshop aims at resuming projects that started during the previous round of the festival.

The festival is organized under the auspices of the ministries of culture and tourism as well as the National Council for Women and the Cinema Syndicate.