Archive for category Cairo

translation is coming….

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15 April

Today, I shot some footage in the garden of the musuem. Very inspiring. It’s a kind of Easter holiday here as well, so the western tourists are not in the majority. Groups of schoolchildren, turned out neatly in uniform. Totally different from how people dress in the west. Bare legs would be out of place here. As I was enjoying my glass of mango juice in my favourite cafe I discovered that I had filmed in the wrong format. A pity, because it was really good material. Hopefully, I’ll manage to film it again tomorrow without police intervention. And let’s hope that the gardiner will do that trick again. I didn’t give him any baksheesh yesterday.
A couple of policemen came after me yesterday while I was filming the Tahir Bridge. So far, I’ve managed to wriggle out of such situations by acting innocent and speaking English. My fellow-camera operators have more trouble. There is something special about returning to the same situation time and again, also because it is – quite literally – so closed off.
Between 17.00 and 18.00 I shot my third one-minute on the El Tahir Bridge. Young couples come to this bridge around sunset. The poem on the bridge is caressed and fawned over as if it were the tomb of the poet Hafiz himself in Shiraze, Iran. Many young lovers read a poem there and touch his tomb, hoping for all sorts of good fortune.
My attention focuses on filming. My photos are thoughts of the moment.

Drink wine and spread flowers
Of Fate what do you seek?
The rose said in the early hours
Nightingale, what do you speak?

Hafiz

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Monday/Tuesday 13, 14 April

Monday was all about my camera. Yasmine spent two hours in a taxi, looking for a Canon specialist. I walked around in the neighbourhood, asking people if they knew of one. Eventually, Tarik struck lucky. Yes, it was a button that I hadn’t noticed. I could have died of embarrassment.
Anyway, Nozomi, Eagle and I stepped into a taxi at 4.30 a.m. to shoot my minute between 5 and 6 a.m. I thought we were heading for the dead city but the driver took us to Old Cairo. We ended up at the Coptic quarter of the old city. The tourist police were still asleep. They woke up with a start; we were the first that day. The streets were deserted apart from a few stray cats and dogs. Before we knew it, we were in the historical part of the city. But the conditions for filming were poor. Too much artificial light. Fortunately, just before six, the sun began to rise though it had a lot of trouble penetrating the smog. Walked back to our hotel along the Nile. Hayam arrived this afternoon to receive some camera lessons. Salah came to show his first shots. Exciting stuff. Yesterday evening I went out for dinner with Amal el Gamal, Mr Shariff and Eagle. It was a memorable occasion. When Mr Shariff heard about my earlier visits to Egypt and my fourteen-day stay in Thebes on the edge of the desert, he told me that, long ago, he had spent six years ‘on vacation’ in the desert. Apparently he has spent 14 years in five different prisons. I met him for the first time during my last visit to Cairo and was immediately taken by his wisdom and humanity. I came into contact with him through Amal, who is currently making a documentary about him. One of his first novels has been translated into English. I’m glad, because my Arabic isn’t exactly improving by the day. The photos were taken early in the evening. We had arranged to meet at the El Hussein Mosque. They seemed to be having a party. Glasses of fruit juice were even being handed out at the men’s entrance. Here you can see the Imam on his way to the mosque.

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Street mural

I was curious about what was written across the picture of the woman. It emerged that she was the daughter of the spice trader behind the wall. They assured me that she was much prettier in the flesh. I asked if she was married and was told No. I then asked what would happen to the picture if she did get get married. It would have to go, he said. Because her husband would get very jealous if everyone could look at her.

Saturday 11, Sunday 12 April

And I thought it was all because of Ramadan that the nights were turned into days and people snatched a few hours of sleep when they got a chance. I was wrong. The people here don’t like to sleep. There is always something going on. People don’t think twice about ringing you at midnight and asking you out for a drink. Tarik picked us up yesterday at 11 o’clock and we went to the Odeon. A beautiful old hotel with a terrace and a wonderful view of the city. It was almost full moon. I had a Campari with fresh lemon juice. The night was perfect. And then, before we knew it, it was 2.30 am and we were walking back to my hotel. And we weren’t the only ones on the streets. Around 15 million people live in this city, which is more or less equal in size to the Province of Utrecht. There is scarcely one square metre for each inhabitant. Walking on the street is more like moving forward in an uncontrollable throng. Everybody bumps into one another and the pavements are just an extra shopping street. On Saturday we looked at the map of Cairo. It seems that our film locations will cover a very large part of Cairo. We’re ready to go. Yasmine El Rashidi, Tarik Sudema, Nozomi Kume, Salah Hashem Mustasfas, Hayam Abdel Baky, Amal El Gamal, Adham Yussef and your truly.
I shot my first one-minute today at the entrance to the Egyptian Museum.

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Friday Prayer day.

It was a nice sunday on friday

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Thursday, 9 April

This evening we had our second meeting at Fenix, Tarik’s office. He introduced me to Dalia, who will make the one-minutes for him with gender as the theme. It will be a documentary-style film. Yasmine El Rashidi will search for parts of the city that offer an escape from the madness. Hayam is going to take a look at the metro and bus station and film a bird’s-eye view of Cairo by night. Salah is going back to his home territory to film a wedding and and a special women’s street between 16.00 and 17.00. Adham will register light and sound at different times of the day. I’m off to film the tourists at the Egyptian museum. It’s such a pity that I don’t speak the language but you can see by their enthusiasm that it is really inspiring.
Nozomi arrives today. By tomorrow our group will be complete. I still have to talk to Amel today. She needs more information before she decides whether to join us. I hope she does. She has camera experience and works for the TV.
It is a very inspiring, young and talented group. I am so happy that I managed to bring them together and that I can be a part of the project.

Wednesday 8 april

To day I give the content of the blog to Eagle. I met him in the hotel and we went off together. Here is history of the day. The chcolate I bring  from home makes him writing…. You know the chocolate movie with Juliette Binoche!
We are sitting at an outdoor café in Cairo.  Anne wants to photograph a group of young local girls as they interact.  So we sit drinking coffee and tea while they get used to our sitting at the next table.  While we are waiting a young shoeshine boy comes up and wants to shine my shoes.  Anne reaches for her camera and the boy wants to run but he is hungry for the work and I distract him.  Anne pretends to shoot pictures of the girls while taking photos of the shoeshine boy (sneaky woman).  The shoeshine boy has a good heart; it shows in his earnest smile has he works while doing a good job of it.  While he is working, two older men starting looking over Anne’s shoulder at the screen of her camera to see what pictures she has taken.  Anne then follows them back into their shop where they are hand-binding booklets in a print shop.  Cairo a city of 18 million, and the people are so friendly – that is amazing to me, I guess I have become used to big American cities that are not so nice.  Anne comes back from the shop and is now able to get some pictures of the girls. They are smoking a water pipe, most likely without the permission of their parents as they have certain furtive look about them as if expecting to be caught while working real hard at acting as if it is an everyday affair.

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Tuesday, 7 April

Today was the first day of filming. It was also the day that I tasted my first strawberry. Luscious. What a wonderful taste. I made a detailed photographic study of it. I was so carried away by this mouth-watering experience that a trader managed to entice me into his shop. It all happened so quickly and I had forgotten what it was like to be accosted on the street as a tourist. Up till then, I had been accompanied by someone who knew the ropes. He was visibly disconcerted by the fact that I was more inspired by his boat than his perfumes.

The first meeting Today we had our first meeting for the one-minutes for 24 Cairo. Adam Youssef, Tarik Soedema, Salah Hashem and myself came together in Tarik’s office. Tarik and Adam are two very talented young men. Tarik is an artist-designer and a multimedia and a business specialist. Adam is a very promising archtect. Sala is a film critic and documentary maker and organiser. We began by telling one another about the kind of work we do and then we discussed the project. What parts of a city should we show? There are so many stereotypical pictures of Cairo. How do we deal with that in our portrait? Another two meetings this week, then we start filming. Hopefully we’ll be complete in shalla on Saturday. I have brought along Brechtje van de Haak’s film about Lagos for inspiration. The last time I visited Cairo was a real eye-opener for me. Yesterday morning I accompanied Omar to the Khan El Khalili market in the old Moslem part of Cairo. Omar needed to cover his head. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a scarf, for a totaly different reason, when I visited a 500-year-old mosque.