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Interviews with the Filmmakers
from the Jesuit Cultural Centre

The filmmakers speak about the opportunity the Jesuit Centre gave them through its workshop:

Ahmed el Samra 
Before the Jesuit workshop, my knowledge of filmmaking was spontaneous not academic; I could talk but not write poetry. The Jesuit workshop gave me the opportunity to learn about the history of the cinema and how to make a film. It also gave me the chance to interact with the trainers and participants to formulate my own identity.

Islam Kamal
Before the Jesuit workshop, we loved cinema and wished we could make films. The Jesuit Centre not only gave us the opportunity to make films but also to show them to an audience.

Emad Mabrouk 
Before joining the workshop, I had already made a film and I thought that I knew everything about filmmaking. But on joining the workshop, I came to realize that learning about cinema is endless.

Hadeel Nazmy 
Of course the Jesuit workshop gave me an excellent opportunity as it enabled me to know more about images, digital technology, how to make my first film and what a film is in the first place.

Mohamed Siam 
It was a pioneering step in Alexandria. We always used to complain about the centralization of filmmaking in Cairo. It is a problem for us Alexandrians to stay in Cairo for a long time to study cinema.

Mohamed Rashad
 All of us wanted to go to Cairo to study cinema but it was difficult. Had it not been for the Jesuit workshop, we would not have been filmmakers.
Two years ago no one in Alexandria would have thought about making films but the Jesuit workshop made nine films at one go and there are more films to come with the new workshop. I believe this is good.

The filmmakers expressing different views as to whether they will stay in Alexandria or leave for Cairo:

Emad Mabrouk     
As for me, I can’t leave Alexandria. Whenever I have to leave Alexandria, I can’t stay away from it for more than a week.

If one’s films are related to the city, it would be difficult to part with it because if one is to go to another place, one would not be able to express oneself.

Ahmed el Samra    
I have an opinion. Definitely I want to remain in Alexandria. It is a unique city. I’m not biased but anyone who lives in Alexandria and tries to understand it will find it different and unique. Cairo is a market.

I find that the distinction we have derives from the fact that we are in Alexandria; we edit, film and make everything in Alexandria and I believe Alexandria deserves this. It deserves to have its own filmmakers who speak about it and its people.

Islam Kamal        
I don’t know where I will go but even Cairo is too confusing; if Alexandria is too quiet, Cairo is too noisy. So I don’t know. But what I’m sure of is that if there is no commercial demand for the films made in Alexandria, there won’t be a tangible cinema movement in Alexandria. It is a matter of supply and demand. I’m not sure that what is happening now will move things forward.

Mohammed Salah aka Zambouzo
What matters most is sustainability; one cannot talk serious continuity without that concept. Alexandria runs in our veins, as the adage goes, but little is happening here: people in Alexandria tend to talk rather than act, and when they dream, their dreams can only come true in Cairo. I do not wish to go to Cairo, but I realize it is a decision that will have to be made, no matter how long I try to postpone it. The ultimate aim is cinema, not some remote ideal or nostalgia that will serve no purpose after all. I wish Alexandria were the same city it used to be in the 1920s and 30s, but with violence breaking out in the once pluralistic and cosmopolitan city, one of the last ties with a glorious past has been severely severed. Cinematically, there is a tentative movement towards attempts at alternative cinema, always a good first step ... Where it will go from there remains to be seen; but the thought that Mohamed Bayoumi was unearthed after all those years of total oblivion sparks some hope for the unknowns bearing the brunt of exhuming a body draped in the Alexandrian flag. (Salah likes to emphasize that after the initial screening of his film in France, he insisted that its Egyptian debut take place nowhere other than at The Jesuit Cultural Centre.)

The filmmakers speaking about their strong team spirit:

Hadeel
The nine films were based on the idea of role reversal. At a time I would work as an assistant director and at another time I would work as an executive producer or editor. So it was all based on the idea that the nine helped one another because they spoke the same language.

Mohamed Siam 
The nine films were based on the idea of role reversal. At a time I would work as an assistant director and at another time I would work as an executive producer or editor. So it was all based on the idea that the nine helped one another because they spoke the same language.

Islam Kamal  
We are a team and we work together because we are only nine filmmakers working in Alexandria and there isn’t a large number of people interested in making films in Alexandria.

Ahmed el Samra  
In our films the roles were flexible. We used to help one another regardless of the job description because what we were concerned about was the film. I don’t care whether my name will be written or not. I loved the experience. The idea of cooperation between nine Alexandrians who had the same dream and who decided to make it come true is different and unique. There is another workshop and we’re waiting to see its outcome. I wish them good luck.

Hadeel Nazmy speaking about her film and Mohamed Siam, one of the male filmmakers, commenting on it.

Hadeel Nazmy
The film presents a repressed girl in her late twenties who comes under sudden detention inside an elevator due to a breakdown. She receives a wrong telephone call from a man. The speaker starts to flirt with the girl and the call is gradually transformed into a sentimental relation which allows the girl to discover a new silenced aspect of herself. The idea is that social traditions and norms curb this girl who needs to discover herself even if this discovery takes place during a crisis.

Mohamed Siam

Women are very influential. Women in the cinema are few but their contribution usually has a strong impact. They don’t enter the field of the cinema to joke or waste time. If male filmmakers could be categorized into serious or trivial, women filmmakers are always serious because they know what they want. Hadeel’s film is a case in point. It drew attention not only to our films but also to SEMAT and the Jesuit Centre thanks to the prizes it got.

Islands

Mohammed Salah aka Zambouzo
My films are mainly about alienation and the plight of isolation in a society torn apart by irreconcilable differences and lack of communication and empathy, hence the choice of Islands for the title of my longest film (50 minutes) where the characters live in lonely spaces longing and failing to reach out. One of the characters (by the name of Caroline) is constantly engaged in writing and mailing letters addressed to none other than herself, we are shocked to find out; and an aging lonely Mathilda finds solace in pouring milk in her tea and watching in childlike amusement as they merge to form clouds to the sound of her frenzied giggling. (Asked whether the Christian first names were intentionally chosen, Salah smiles dismissing the thought, saying the names were inspired by those of neighbours and a childhood friend. The film runs parallel to Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket in the background, to evoke a backdrop of underlying violence threatening to emerge, as Salah believes it already has.)
The film had rave reviews in the Arabic press, especially in Lebanon, where one critic notes that despite, and perhaps because of the lack of traditional Alexandrian iconography, the film comes off as a true Alexandrian film void of folkloric cliché, a lyrical paradigm of meaningless references that only eclipse a vision in need of an audience.