Capturing the Essence of a City in time of Chaos

In the Last Days of the City (2016) - El Said

It's 2009. This is before Arab Spring, pre-Tahrir Square Cairo. Mubarak is still in power, but there is a change in the air in a largely secular city of nearly million. A filmmaker Khalid (Khalid Abdala) seems to be making a personal documentary. With a handheld camera, he is seen documenting and editing various footage - a teacher in a theater group, his ailing mother in the hospital, his friends, and the daily hustle and bustle of the city. It coincides with him searching for a flat because he needs to move out of the place he shared with Laila (Laila Samy), his ex-lover, who makes frequent appearances on those tapes.

His childhood friends, one from Beirut, one from Bagdad and one from Berlin, are in the city for a conference and they exchange their perspectives. They make a pact that they will exchange their footage. Khalid is having a hard time finding a new space and also working on his films leaving his real estate broker and his editor equally frustrated.

In the mean time, the world is changing before his eyes. The mannequins on storefront display with western style clothes to bare with newspaper covered to the head to toe black hijabs. Daily street demonstrations with nervous looking cops in riot gear watching them contrasts with government propaganda on the radio blaring in taxi cabs. The news of heated soccer matches between neighboring countries add to the general fervor in the streets.

I remember seeing a film Microphone by Ahmad Abdalla which was a love letter to Alexandria in 2010. I remember how vibrant and optimistic the film was and how devastating to see what unfolded in Egypt right after. In the Last Days of the City, captured in real time by El Said, but released in 2016, is a lyrical, contemplative time capsule across the Arab world that is at once personal, fleeting and heart breaking in retrospect.

This film was recommended by Hany Osman. Thank you Hany.

Raise your voice!

Microphone (2010) - Abdalla

Watching Microphone now, which is basically a love letter to Alexandria, is all the more poignant considering what's been happening in Egypt for the last few months. Director Ahmad Abdalla succeeds in capturing the essence of the youth culture in the Egypt's second largest, cosmopolitan port city. This film was first conceived as a documentary- shot on HD with a small mobile crew. Then it later evolved into a narrative starring the TV/film superstar Khaled Abol Naga (who also serves as a producer) while keeping the small scale filmmaking intact. It features some of the best underground musicians and graffiti artists the sun drenched bustling Mediterranean city can offer.

Khaled comes back after 7 years of living overseas. He finds that his old flame no longer wants him, his father non-communicative after his mother's death and himself not knowing what to do with his life. While working at an advertising firm and wandering around the city, he encounters many young street musicians, artists and tech-savvy skaters. Collecting underground music becomes an obsession for him. He teams up with the local college film students who have been working on their thesis project about the street culture, and tries to organize a show.

The music is outstanding, Abdalla gives an ample time to each real performers (notably Massar Egbari, Y-Crew, Mascara, Soot Fel Zahma and Nossair) to express their thoughts through their diverse musical forms - hip-hop, metal, rock, etc. Some music reflect their discontent of the government and some connect with the other theme of the movie - love and heartbreaks. The disjointed breakup scene of Khaled and Salma is present throughout the film.

As Khaled and crew work on going over the hurdle that National Art Council set up for them, it becomes apparent for all to see that the old folks who are in charge will always embrace the old and never give a chance to the young generation to voice their opinion- there is a funny bit where a weaselly art council member announces that he decided to go for a friend of Umm Kulthum (perhaps the best known traditional Egyptian singer, born in 1893) instead of Massar Egbari for one of the government sponsored concert.

It's a bittersweet, elegiac film fluidly put together with the colorful, vibrant backdrop of Alexandria. It is a very portentous film, as the one of the characters in the movie says, "You move on, but live each day with a little bit of sadness."

Microphone plays as a part of ND/NF 2011, 3/29 8:30pm at MoMA and 3/31 6pm at FSLC. For more information and tickets, please click on ND/NF 2011 website here.