Change and the industry

Egyptian actor-filmmaker Khalid Abol Naga feels that rather than the revolution affecting cinema, many films before January 25 actually moulded people's psyche to hope for it. Khalid Abol Naga, a young Egyptian actor, producer and director, was in Abu Dhabi last month for the screening of his award-winning film Microphone. Weekend Review caught up with him as he spoke about his work, the lessons he has learnt and the relationship between political change and the Egyptian filmmaking industry. Excerpts: In 2010, you acted in and co-produced Microphone, which later won several awards at international film festivals. Were you expecting it to draw this kind of attention? Microphone was nominated at the Toronto Film Festival, one of the biggest four in the world. That was a big push. Then it went to Tunisia, where we got the best film award, and then to Cairo, Dubai and Istanbul. We went to many other festivals, where the film got many awards. We were very happy with that. At first it was scheduled to go out to public cinemas in Cairo on January 25 [2011], the same day the revolution in Egypt started, and people went to Tahrir [Square] and not to Microphone. As the producer, I wasn't very happy about it. But as a person, I, and the whole crew and cast, were very happy that the people had decided to move, to have a voice and to change the way the country was going. So, surprisingly, after all the success at the big festivals, we didn't have viewers at the cinemas that day because of the revolution. But it got distribution in Europe, and in Turkey, where for the first time a contemporary Egyptian film was in the cinemas. Now, more than a year later, the film is soon to be shown on television and will later be released on DVD. The success of Microphone has a very interesting timeline with the changes in society. The interesting thing is that the film is about that — it is about change, only that we didn't expect the change to happen in the streets, as it is happening now. What are some of the lessons you learnt as producer? For my second feature as a producer and not only as an actor, it was very important for me to calculate the risks I was taking. In my first film as a producer, Heliopolis, I calculated a lot of risks but missed one — distribution. I didn't make any distribution deals ahead of the film, thinking that this is a big plus because you will have a film ready and so you will have leverage to sell it to different distributors. Apparently, it doesn't work that way. There is a monopoly on the market and what you have to do is actually talk, not even have a deal, with the distributors beforehand. So I learnt a lesson with Heliopolis, and with Microphone, my co-producer Ahmad Abdullah and I spoke to distributors in the Arab world and made the deal beforehand. That helps not only financially but also to know the number of cinemas available for the film to have a chance. Then it is the people's choice whether they love it or not. Can you tell us about your new documentary? On January 25 [2011], we took the crew and went to Tahrir Square to see what was going on, and we started shooting the demonstrations. We tried to upload the videos online on January 28, and later the internet was cut off. We didn't know that that little demonstration on January 25 would escalate to becoming a revolution. From that day on began the script of my film Tahrir El Tahrir. Originally it was scheduled to be a documentary, but now it is turning into a feature film, which is exactly what happened with Microphone. Microphone was scheduled to be a documentary about the artists and it turned into a feature. Do you think that is because the story starts to take a certain shape and is probably better told through special visual effects? That is exactly what it is. Usually you have a choice to tell a story in a different form, and usually when you do a documentary, it has no artistic lights in it. You are basically shooting real people doing real things in real time at a real place, but in a feature you set up everything and put it all together. In between these two, there is another genre. It is not a documentary and it is not a drama, so it is what you call a docudrama, a drama based on documentary facts — and that is how Microphone happened. A documentary is very raw, a feature is more dramatised and colourful in the telling of the story. I think this age belongs to this genre. I can see more and more of it everywhere, especially with young filmmakers. They want to show something that is full of news and at the same time it is not the news they are talking about. They are more concerned about how they will portray the atmosphere related to the news. How do you think the political change in Egypt in the past year has affected filmmakers? I believe it is the opposite. If you go back two or three years before the revolution, you will find a lot of films that kind of predicted this change. And I think that is what has affected many people's psyche, or their consciousness to expect change and actually hope for it. I think that is what has been happening. The revolution has definitely brought a lot of changes, but we are not there yet. It is not over yet, meaning that the change has started but it is not yet time to start building — it is still only time to change. It hasn't run its full course yet. From: Gulfnews