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Spotlight on Egypt
Young Egyptian Filmmakers Tackle Social Issues at New York Screening
February 13, 2008
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One of Duff's students on site.
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An emergency room that serves over 14,000 patients each month who are unable to afford better care, a man who irons with his feet, an Iraqi woman who, with her two young children, fled the violence in her home country for a better life in Egypt -- these are some of the portraits 60 students and professionals watched during a film screening on Tuesday, February 12 at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in New York.
The event, co-sponsored by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the American University in Cairo (AUC) highlighted the work of Knight International Journalism Fellow Craig Duff during his time in Egypt working with AUC students on documentary films. The screening featured seven such films, which had been cut to fit time constraints by Duff.
"I think people were struck by the storytelling and the characters in the stories and there’s a sort of universality to individual experience," Duff said after the event. "That’s why I really focused on first person. Because when someone says 'I' instead of 'you' or 'they' or 'he' or 'she,' it has an authenticity to it."
Duff said that the audience caught a glimpse of the bigger issues at play in Egyptian culture through the lens of the seven individual stories on daily life.
"It’s wonderful that they got some people to tell us their story so that we really understand what life is like in Egypt,” Theresa Healy said, whose son spent a semester in Egypt at AUC.
The series of films lasted a little over one hour and was followed by a question and answer session with Duff and AUC student Alaa Al Dajani, who produced the short film on a blind oud player.
"I thought the films were very thoughtful and very human," said Mohammad Bazzi, the former Middle East Correspondent for Newsday, and a visiting Murrow Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations. “I thought they captured elements of daily life and they captured daily characters in Egypt that you don’t normally see and hear about. It was a good format."
For more information on ICFJ's Knight International Journalism Fellowships, please visit www.knight.icfj.org.
To sign up for invitations to future ICFJ events, please click here.
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