From May 6th to 26th Cairo’s Zawya cinema was given over to documentaries. For twenty days the cinema hosted conferences, workshops and a programme of 20 films covering 1922 to the present. The idea of the festival is to help the Egyptian public discover the documentary genre and open discussion about its forms, creativity and boundaries. The screenings fell into three sections: the first, Narratives, was devoted to films whose narrative style flirts with drama. This section opened with “Three Disappearances of Soad Hosny” – a film about Egyptian cinema in which director Rania Stefan parallels the tumultuous career of actress Soad Hosni with the heyday and decline of Egyptian cinema. The second section, Anthropology on the Screen, focussed on anthropological films. The last section Highlights showed the most recent creations. Writer-producer Rania Stephan also hosted a workshop Visualizing Non-Fiction in which she explored the heterogeneity of the documentary genre.
Sources: egyptindependent.com et zawyacinema.com
