A bit alienating it is. At IDFA the eventful account of Egypt's February revolution Tahrir 2011 see while at the same time in Tahrir Square, the second phase of resistance to the dictatorship is in full swing. A kind of 'back to the future' feeling.
Tahrir 2011 is a relatively unpolished but urgently put together documentary that is nevertheless more than just a montage of footage shot with mobile phones of the sometimes bloody events. In fact, the documentary made by three directors (Tamer Ezzat, Ayten Amin and Amr Salama) is Tahrir 2011 an amalgamation of three separate films. The first part is indeed what you might expect, but no less thrilling for that. Moving testimonies cut with great pace and dynamism to the rioting in the square - from the impressive rows of dignified protesters chanting their slogans for a free Egypt to youths trying in vain to stop a water cannon and raw footage of the reception of the wounded in a hastily-equipped emergency hospital. It brings it all much closer than in the usual newsreel footage.
The second part is the most revealing, as it consists of interviews with sometimes unrecognisably filmed members of the police and security forces deployed against the protesters. Some take the opportunity to state that they feel abused. The prelude to the confrontation is covered in the third part, in which insiders describe the methods by which President Mubarak managed to establish his autocratic rule. With plenty of telling archive material, including examples of how news photos were manipulated. Like the one of Obama's visit. In the original shot, the US president is in the lead, a mistake that Mubarak's photoshoppers quickly managed to correct. In the corrected photo, Mubarak is in the lead.
The Arab Spring is actually only sparsely represented at IDFA. That is, according to festival director Ally Derks, because most films did not exceed the level of a reportage. Only one other Egyptian film appears in the festival's title list. The short Excursions in the Dark by Kaya Behkalam is also a kind of retrospective of February's events, but in a completely different way. Rather an experimental film poem than a traditional documentary. Images of empty, nighttime streets of Cairo, accompanied by a mysterious text that, according to the credits, is composed of dreams Cairo residents had after the uprising. Actually quite encouraging that something like this is being made.
Leo Bankersen
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