#1: Cimatheque - Alternative Film Center Cairo

Programme

• Horse of Mud (Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, EG 1971, 12’)

  In one of her earliest and most poignant works, veteran documentarian Atteyat Al-Abnoudy captures the dignity of Cairo's poor. In this beautifully photographed document, the primitive process of brick-making is examined, revealing the monotonous choreography of a nonetheless meaningful social task. The sad dance of their fluid movements intermingled with personal stories deeply resonates.

• Sad Song Of Touha (Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, EG 1972, 12’)

  In many ways the sister film to Horse of Mud, Al-Abnoudy’s second film, Sad Song of Touha, was her graduation film at the Film School in Cairo. This documentary is a portrait of Cairo’s street performers. The artistry of this community of fire-eaters, child contortionists, and other performers is captured through the lens of Al-Abnoudy’s unobtrusive camera, accompanied by the spare and haunting narration provided by poet Abdel Rahman Al Abnoudy.

• The Sandwich (Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, EG 1975, 12')

  The Sandwich is an experimental short that explores the idyllic rural province of “Abnoud.” In a village that seems to have escaped the passage of time, the softness of the film’s focus on a group of children freely playing in an open, green space is effectively altered by outside forces. Deftly combining elements of fiction and non-fiction, The Sandwich is perhaps the lesser-known yet more confident of Al-Abnoudy’s early films.

• Permissible Dreams (Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, EG 1983, 31')

  Told through the eyes of Oum Said, a woman farmer living near the canal zone, Permissible Dreams captures a woman’s struggles with societal and gender inequality and the desire for a real education, but in typical Al-Abnoudy fashion, eschews ideological trappings or the fetishizing of Egypt’s poorer classes.