and Arabs too engrossed in writing
songs or listening to Oum Kalthoum’s
two-hourlongperformancestogetbusy
and ready to fight.” Several countries
took advantage of Egypt’s demise, but
none became ‘the new Egypt’.SOFT POWER
Today, film festival selections often go
to directors from North African and
Levant countries, singers from Lebanon
and Syria have taken on the mantle of
Oum Kalthoum, TV series, once from
Syria, now from Turkey, compete with
Egyptian ones, and increasingly money
poured into the entertain-
ment industry comes from
the Gulf countries. But it
would be an exaggeration
to say Egypt is no longer a
big player. It is the most
populous country of the Arab world,
which means its own public can still
make or break the box office.
Arab globalisation started long ago.
The saying goes: ‘Books are written in
Cairo, published in Beirut and read in
Baghdad’. There was a time when many
singers who were not Egyptian would
sing in Egyptian dialect; now Gulf
dialects are more common. Egyptian
artists today are happy to sign with
Rotana, a Saudi group founded in 1987
that produces films and music on more
generous terms than Egyptian produc-
ers can offer. Saudi-owned pan-Arab
television channel Al Arabiya also pays
rates that Egyptian channels cannot
compete with.
For Medhat El-Adl it’s a matter of
soft power. “The Gulf wants to compete
with Egypt,” he says. “Egypt used to
produce a hundred films a year, nowit’s ten. For El Adl Group, we stopped
producing films and have focused on
series since 2005.”
Gulf financing of films for television
in the ’80s and satellite production
in the ’90s had a secondary effect on
movies, with Rotana censoring foreign
films it airs and Egyptian films it co-
finances. “The Egyptian public is keen
on Turkish series, because they have
more freedom than Egyptian series, less
censorship,” El-Adl says. Screenwriter
Abdel Rahim Kamal laments the effect
on young Egyptians: “The youth don’t
knowouridentityanymore,”herecentlywrote. “They know more about Turkish
and American cities and places than
about here, and know more about the
Vietnam war than about the 1973 war.”
A2016study,‘MediaUseintheMiddle
East’, from Northwestern University in
QatarandtheDohaFilmInstitute,paints
adifferentpictureofEgyptians.Surveyed
byHarrisPoll,88%ofEgyptianrespond-
ents said their favourite entertainer is
from their own country, 95% that they
watch films from their own country
compared to 22% for films from the
Arab world in general, and 99% that
they watch Egyptian programmes with
only12% for programmesfromtheArab
world.InallthesecasesEgyptiansscored
far higher for local content than re-
spondents from the other countries sur-
veyed (Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia,
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates
[UAE]). The report describes Egypt as“still the most prolific film production
hub in the region” and “[one of the] top
producers of scripted TV programming
in the region”. When it comes to music,
once again Egyptians buck the trend:
“Over 70% of nationals in each country
listentomusicfromacrossdifferentArab
countries, except for Egyptians, who
listen almost exclusively to Egyptian
music,”the report claims.
The2011uprisinggavehopetomany,
with a bubbling of songs and films
about the revolution. Cultural spaces
opened with new theatres and cinemas.
Zawya is one of them. Opened in 2014,
it is the first arthouse cinema in Egypt,
with plans to set up screens across the
country. It is also cheaper to buy tickets
for Zawya films than blockbusters, and
it is one of the few places in Cairo that
screens short films, arthouse films and
documentaries. Zawya also organises
festivals – most recently Cairo Cinema
Days in May this year – and encourages
local independent cinema.SELF-CENSORSHIP
With the country’s economy still strug-
gling to bounce back to pre-revolution
levels, investment in the arts is not easy
to come by. Mohamed Gaber, business
development manager for Mazzika,
which had 85% of the market share in
the Egyptian music industry in 2002,
says the profits made in the business
are so low or so slow that the company
doesn’t take as many risks to discover
new talent any more. He adds that
with the fall in tourism since 2011, live
events attract only 35% of the income
they used to.
With the comeback of the Cairo
International Film Festival in 2014,RUE DES ARCHIVES/AGIP ALL RIGHTS RESERVEDEgypt is the most populous country
of the Arab world; its own public
can make or break the box office84