Cinema... Other lives
Each time I had to write a word for the catalog as a strong tradition.. I am flooded by traditional and mundane financial and administrative issues, so I’ve decided this year to try and evade those basic difficulties and only write about cinema, its role, its immortality and its charm.
I was struck with inspiration of this title, "Cinema.. To Live Many Lives", at title that incited a debate between the festival’s director Azza Elhosseiny and I... For I truly believe that cinema is genuinely a portal to other lives... For when the audience watches a film on the screen like "Sankofa" by Haile Gerima.. And follows that woman who works as a model and gets transported back in time to the era of enslavement in her hometown... There is no doubt that we get to live her suffering, her life, and the years of her journey are added to the years of our own lives, to our emotions and our human experience, just as we experience the suffering of the people of that city that was taken over by extremists in "Timbuktu" by Abderrahmane Sissako... Or the suffering of Mohammed Abu Sweilem and the poor peasants of his village as they lose their land in "The Land" by Youssef Chahine... Or the foolishness of the child and the teenager of Noura in (Halfaouine Boy of the Terraces) by Férid Boughedir... We float into the seas of lust and adolescence, and we achieve the dream... In all these cinematic experiences, we fly into a parallel universe to the one we live in... We add new experiences to our own... and years to our lives... We truly live other lives... And witness images that immortalize space and time... And this is the main reason why humans love the art of cinema.
Welcome, our esteemed, cinephile guests of the festival... Welcome brothers from all over Africa... Welcome everyone to other cinematic lives in LAFF... And historical ancient lives in its temples, streets and fragrant air full of loving and peaceful energies... I wish you all a pleasant time... With the magic of cinema in a beautiful part of mother Africa.
Sayed Fouad
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