(Photo: Luxor African Film Festival website)
Head of the Luxor African Film Festival (LAFF) Sayed Fouad announced on Monday an agreement of cooperation with the Tunisian Carthage Film Festival.
According to the Luxor festival’s website, the agreement covers a number of points, including the honouring of late Egyptian director Youssef Chahine at the next Carthage festival.
For its part, LAFF will organise a photography exhibition of Chahine’s biggest films, with photos by directors of photography Mohammed Bakr and Hussein Bakr, managed by their grandson Hussein Bakr.
The Carthage festival is to host 10 students from LAFF, with travel costs equally split between the two festivals and housing expenses to be covered by Carthage.
At the next edition of the Carthage festival, a special seminar will be arranged to honour LAFF, which will also be organising a workshop by Hussein Bakr on the role of a photographer in cinema.
LAFF will hold a Tunisian cinema week next September in Cairo, while Carthage will hold a week of Egyptian cinema in early 2017.
Both sides agreed to find means of connecting their respective funding projects; Carthage’s Supplement to Support Post-Production Operations, and LAFF’s Istisal Fund to Support Production of Short Films.
Fouad added that this cooperation was first considered last year, when the Carthage festival was honoured at the Luxor Film Festival.
In this year’s edition of the Luxor Film Festival, 10 films that have won Carthage’s Tanit Golden Award were screened.
The Carthage Film Festival has long-held close ties with Egypt and Egyptian films.
The last edition, which ran in November 2015, was hosted by Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef and featured participating Egyptian films including the feature film Out of the Ordinary by Daoud Abdel-Sayed, and two the documentaries Out on the Street by Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, and Stray by Ahmad Fostok.
Two Egyptian films – On the Fence and Egyptian Jeanne d’Arc – received assistance grants from the Takmil Workshop, a parallel programme that awards seven grants to “enable African and Arab filmmakers to submit their films in the post-production phase to the expertise of an international jury,” as mentioned on the festival's official website.
The Carthage festival also paid special tribute to iconic women of Egyptian cinema, including late actresses Faten Hamama, Mariam Fakhr El-Din and Maali Zayed, as well as late directors Asmaa El-Bakry and Nabeeha Lotfy.
The festival’s 26th edition aimed to “anchor the Carthage Film Festival in its Arab-African land while maintaining openness to world cinematography, those who share our concern for independence and cultural expression,” according to the festival's official website.
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