Selim Mourad was one of the friendliest faces I’ve encountered during the 38th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival. His energy, oozing with excitement and awe at the city –Cairo, the capital of Egypt- didn’t mirror the heavy subject matter which he chose for his first long documentary This Little Father Obsession which translated –impressively- into a different Arabic title The Austrian Emperor. The Arabic title was derived from a scene where the father comments on the son not having kids –because of his homosexuality- with a casualness that could be implying more than it intended; that he was not the Austrian Emperor, so why should anybody care whether he had children.
Mourad made a personal film that documented a transitional stage in his life, as well as his family’s. He was just coming out to his family when they had to sell the ancient family home for money to survive. So there was an act of creation and another of destruction; where did a 28-year-old gay Lebanese man find his footing?
“I hate labels. I can’t be saying that I am making a “gay” movie. It is a film where the director happens to be gay. My family history is the main plotline through which my sexual identity happens to contribute to the course of action.”
The Family: Dementia Review
A Valencian Family Drama that Defies Storytelling in Color
It was a pleasure during the 38th edition of Cairo International Film Festival to get a chance to sit down with Valencian director Giovanna Ribes to talk about her film The Family: Dementia. This powerful drama paints the deterioration of a man’s memory and behavior against the backdrop of familial tension. One of the greater aspects of the film is how Ribes allowed her male characters to show vulnerability as opposed to their female counterparts, who have more composed actions. Three generations of men come to interact in a well-planned narrative with a scratchy, rough style influenced by neo-realism that contains artistic, magical realist interjections.
The grandfather Roger –played brilliantly by Pep Cortés- suffers from dementia. He ages amongst family members who struggle to accept him as he is while his memory slips away. The most sympathetic –and adorably clueless- is the grandson Roger and he is the only one who succeeds in taking the old man for who he is. Ribes takes us into the heart of a real family. Her narrative is inspired by reality. To her, art has no impact if it is not personal. Ribes’ drive to become a director didn’t turn out to be as easy as I thought. In my eyes, it would be really easy for her to become an artist. Her sensitivity shone through her clever eyes and her compassionate gestures. Through her words, the process was gradual:
“I belonged to a family of circus performers and bullfighters. They were artists in that sense. Growing up, I was tired of the discussions and the arguments which their lifestyle generated. I just wanted to be normal.”
Water War
Mom died in a battle; at last
Occurred at a remote aquifers
A battle field, since long;
For a crock of water
A battle aided; none munitions
Threw it into the potable,
That made Croaky noises;
A bucket tied with a coir rope
Milk run after Mexican breakfast none;
Marched miles across all deserted;
Sandals no foot under sore mustered
Neck in crick head on pot mosh
Folks pooled a pond around
Flowed from; pot in no Hydrus
Village an armada in dropped chaos;
Verbose a multitude conquered with
A rift no among them harvested;
A rift in solid waterless reaped
Mesopotamia an uncivilized cradle
Our Tigris and Euphrates
Gone with the wind all rocks rolled;
Cloud of water vaporized: weird
Waste land all asexual parasites
Arid nowhere holy hydrosphere
Erosion everywhere an ergative water
Erupted war ergo world again third
His conch in all oceans above decibel;
Hegemony he a Hawk ruled the roost
When in east heard chanting:
Gage cha yamune chaiva
Godhavary Saraswathy
Narmadhe Sindhu Kavery
Jalesmin sannidhim kuru:
Written By
Vijay P Nair
Water scarcity leads us a third world war soon……
Long Before ISIS
The following poems have been mauled, marred and mutilated by Christopher Bernard
Trump Chaucer
(Adapted from Geoffrey Chaucer)
Whan that Novembre with his shoures sote The drought of sumer hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich liquor That wine must come out of its every flour, Whan Fox News eek with its bitterr breeth Depressed hath in every holt and heeth The rotting croppes, and the ageing sonne Hath in the his last halve cours yronne, And smale foweles maken threnodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye Acause they cannot sleep, for comes the snowe, And all must end that we will ever knowe, Then voters con to go to polling places To cast thir votes in the correct spaces.
And so they came this yeere and voted dead The world that made them, and us buriéd.
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