Tahrir Cinema Needs You!

Tahrir Cinema is now moving in to its third week, and we are in a healthy rhythm in Cairo. If the sit-in / occupation of Tahrir continues through Ramadan, we wont have a problem running the cinema through the long, hot month thanks to the hard work of several very committed people.

But there is work to be done beyond Tahrir, in and outside of Cairo. We have begun, and are doing everything we can, but are acutely aware of what else needs to happen. And of how much help we need.

So I thought it would be useful to break down what we need help with, what you can do.

A cinema has already begun in Alexandria, screening on a public information board the revolutionaries hacked into in Saad Zaghloul Square.

We are hopeful that our friends in Asyut, Mansoura and Suez will also start screenings soon. But there is no limit to the number of places that could be screening footage (up to 80 million). So if you want to organize screenings, please do. It doesn't have to be a full-scale projection, any kind of public exhibition is useful.

Cut a deal with an qahwa, a sports club, a school. Anywhere. With Ramadan coming up we have people coming together across the country. Let's remind them what we're all fighting for, what we've already achieved. Let's help them relive the glorious days together, show them the truths that are being kept from them by State TV.

If you live in Cairo help us work outside Tahrir. We need to get this material seen in neighbourhoods across the city. We need to be up in Roxy. We need to be in Abassiya.

Wherever you are, write to me and we will work out how get you DVDs of material.

If you don't feel like organizing a screening, you can help us distribute DVDs, or help those with computers learn how to find relevant material on YouTube.

Or you can help us collect material. The Revolution was probably one of the most filmed events of all time. And, though it will be a nightmare to organize, I believe there is a value in every piece of camera phone footage. Who knows what's hidden within that frame, or what might become apparent when cut with another? So you can help us collect and organise that.

If you know how to edit material, then come and work at Mosireen. At the moment we're making data DVDs with clips of raw footage and just a little edited material. But we need to assemble more. Not to make any definitive historical documents, but to create acts of witness that can better communicate the key events of the Revolution to those who didn't live directly through them. This is cinema is communication, as testimony, as immediate engagement.

If you have films you've already made, send us a link, bring us a DVD. If, like the No to Military Trials campaign, you have a burning issue that you want to bring the screen, let us know.  

If you have design / digital development skills, there is always work to be done. On Tahrir Cinema and many other projects bound up in the same push towards utopian creativity and communalism, which I'll inevitably go into in this blog if I find more than five minutes a fortnight.

In other news: X Men First Class is total shit. Matthew Vaughn can't handle scale (his best film is the ultra-localized Kick-Ass), Henry Jackman's score rips melodies straight off Hans Zimmer's Thin Red Line score (who rips off Hans?),  and the previously edgy James McAvoy is now so mainstream English he's almost as rubberfaced as Hugh Grant/David Cameron (maybe Irvine Welsh will sort him out). Poor old Michael Fassbender looks like he's lost in a training exercise with first year drama students.

And, for the record, I watched it illegally online.Watch out, Potter.

Information Access

I was supposed to be on a plane to Palestine yesterday. I was due to start filming my next short, Though I Know the River is Dry.

But it became very clear to me on Friday night that the work we're doing with Tahrir Cinema is important. An old man in a suit, his head bald, his beard long and grey, came up to me to with his hand held out, gripped and shook my hand firmly to thank us all for the work we're doing. He's from Tanta, he has his young daughter with him, they've come up to Tahrir for the day. For months he's had the feeling he's being lied to by state TV and now, seeing the footage of January 28th up on the makeshift, wood and plastic screen, he knows for sure.

He tells me we need to bring the cinema to Tanta. Or, if we can't do that now, then we need to give him all this footage. He wont leave until he has a copy. He will show everyone he works with, everyone will watch.

At least five people came up to me that night with different ideas, proposals, requests about how to spread this material. Each one said it was vital that people get to see it.

Later that night @cairocitylimits pointed out that we forget what intense information access we have. If you're reading this blog, you're probably pretty comfortable looking up a video on YouTube. But that's nowhere near the case for everyone. So we are now working overtime to establish ways of getting this material out to the rest of Egypt, of having screens set up in every city of the revolution, of DVDs and USB sticks getting distributed. The images  are so powerful that they can tell you everything you need to know about the Revolution in an instant. The task now is getting them seen.

Who knows, maybe we can set up a distribution system that we can inherit and continue beyond the Revolution, when we go back to focussing on fixing the film industry. What is known, is that my own film is going to have to wait for now.

An enlightening Google Map

This stunningly clear map will direct you towards Tahrir Cinema and the Mosireen tent - the two cinema hotspots in Tahrir right now.

Tahrir Cinema will be screening films every day from 10.30pm
The Mosireen tent will be manned from 8pm to 2am every day to receive footage for the Revolutionary archive projects and to give copies of footage for people to organise screenings outside of Cairo.


View Tahrir Cinema / Mosireen Tent in a larger map

Tahrir Cinema

So the Egyptian Revolution is up and running again. Tahrir Square has been occupied since July 8th, with more people arriving and setting up tents every day.

Having filmed constantly through the first section of the Revolution (after I arrived from America on the 30th), I wanted to do something different. When action and unpleasantness erupts, that's when I want my camera. When things are calm, I find I don't reach for it naturally.

So we set up Tahrir Cinema. A screen to show people films to do with the Revolution. Finished films, raw footage, experimental documentaries - anything to help remind people why they're here and what we can achieve when we work together. Reliving those moments from January 28th when they dismantled the hated Central Security Forces tells you that it can be done again. The cheers that go up every time Omar Soleiman announces the President has stepped down frees you for a brilliant moment from the day's dust and heat.

photo by Sherief Gaber (@cairocitylimits)

The curation is open-source. We ask people for any footage they have, any films they have made, any suggestions they'd like to see up there - we are a screen to serve of the Square.

Already five people have given me CDs and videos files in the last two days. From today we have a tent permanently in the square for people to give us material. As well as screening material, we will add it to the Revolutionary Archive being built at Mosireen - a new citizen journalists' collective, who are central to everything the cinema is doing. 

So if you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see in Tahrir, add them to this Google Document. And if you have any footage from the Revolution that needs adding to the archive, send me a message. This is just the first step on the long road towards re-shaping the way we make and watch films, so come and get involved.

Super 8 and the New Narrative of Zionism

I saw Super 8 yesterday. It's an exact remake of ET with Steven Spielberg shifted horizontally to producer.

There is really very little of interest to the film. For some unknown reason, it’s set in the 1970s. It has a load of children in it. They act very well, which gave reviewers enough excuse to get behind it (no one likes to give JJ Abrams bad reviews), without ever questioning why this film exists. 

I can’t give you the answer (apart from the $150m already in the bank). There is absolutely nothing here you haven’t seen twenty times before. It feels like a long homage to sentimental Spielbergian cinema. Yet again, JJ Abrams skilfully builds up atmosphere and intrigue. Yet again I allow myself to buy into it, telling myself the answer can’t just be another alien in a box. But, incredibly, it is. Thank god I didn’t watch beyond the 3^rd season of Lost.

ET’s plight as an imagining of the Zionist narrative has been pointed out (see James Schamus' essay 'Next Year in Munich' in Representations). He’s lost and alone and just wants to go home. And if Super 8 is a modernization of ET, then it is interesting to see how much that narrative’s tone has changed.

ET was cute and friendly and had the world lining against for him for unknown and unfair reasons. The monster in Super 8 is much larger, faster and more dangerous. Today’s ET is angry.

Whereas Elliot’s love and compassion save the day for little ET, the new Elliot’s compassion in Super 8 just about keeps him from being eaten and that’s it. This new monster doesn’t have human relationships, he doesn’t need them. The only human actor that has any impact on it is Dr Woodward, who sacrifices his life for the alien (Palestine?).

Like ET, the Super 8 monster needs a spaceship to go home. Unlike ET, he has to build it himself, he can’t wait for his parents (America?) to show up.

And so, the blissful naivety of the ET days is over.  The Wall, Cast Lead the Flotilla have all made quite sure that its impossible to portray Israel as a clumsy, lovable friend with a simple domestic desire that we all understand. Instead, it has become, as General Moshe Dayan recommended, "as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." People’s cruelty have, we are told, turned it in to a thing of rage, and now the best thing to do is get the fuck out of its way.