After political censorship, Arab artists fear new barriers

By dpa correspondents Jan 8, 2012, 2:07 GMT

Cairo - The final scene of Ein Shams, an independent award-winning Egyptian film, was supposed to show an old car rolling through central Cairo's Tahrir Square, carrying away the middle class family, with the protagonist Shams, towards their unknown future.

While shooting this last scene, reality blended with fiction, creating a different tale. The 2006 movie ended with depictions of real policemen arresting the crew for filming without permission and script approval from the Interior Ministry.

But artists now are hopeful they will not have to face similar restrictions in post-revolutionary Egypt.

'The creative suffocation of the Egyptian art scene ended with the ousting of (Hosny) Mubarak,' says Yasser Naeim, an aspiring young producer.

'The Egyptian revolution spawned new artistic freedoms and now our duty as artists is to ensure that incidents like the arrest of Ibrahim al-Batout (the director of Shams) will not happen again,' stressed Naeim, who filmed a short movie in 2010 about the difficulties of making Ein Shams.

Liberated by the revolutionary fervour, the Arab uprisings spearheaded an explosion of creativity throughout the region, says Basma al-Husseiny, manager of al-Mawred al-Thaqafy, a cultural exchange centre seeking to support artistic creativity.

Despite the 'unprecedented mobilization of the art scene in the Arab world' many independent artists in Tunisia and Egypt have to deal with being an artist and a political activist at the same time - a duality that provides little time for reflection and partly prevents artists from performing, said Viola Shafik, a renowned scholar and filmmaker.

'There had not been enough time for artists to take a step back and to develop new art forms, which is why, until now, the uprising itself is the dominating source of inspiration,' she told dpa.

Tunisia and Egypt were the first countries to overthrow their leaders in early 2011. The rest of the year was spent in political debates on how to move forward towards democracy.

Several books were printed since the January 25 revolution in Egypt, most of them documenting the events. Others were only pictures taken during the 18 days of protests that forced Mubarak out of power.

In cinema, one documentary was shown. Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician, which touched upon different aspects of the uprising over three parts. The Good gives voice to the everyday heroes of the revolution, the Bad tells the story of four internal security officers assigned to crack down on protesters, while the Politician is a satirical deconstruction of Mubarak.

In Tunisia, revolutionary art did not go much further than in Egypt. Artocracy in Tunisia - a photo exhibition held in Tunis displaying 100 portraits taken during the protests - is one example of how visual artists dealt with the popular uprising.

'Currently, the actual change in culture is coming from the streets, because mainstream arts funded by the government are more rejected than ever,' said Rana Yazji, a Syrian activist and curator.

However, the rise of the Islamists parties in the Arab region have left artists wondering if they will be given the freedom to transform the cultural landscape.

In Morocco, where the Islamist Justice and Development Party celebrated an election win in November, creative freedoms are already deteriorating, according to Mourad Kadiri, a Moroccan poet and cultural activist.

Islamist politicians had demanded the 11th Marrakesh Film Festival in December be in line with Islamic values and have objected to a showing of Amours Voilees, an independent movie, that portrays the extramarital pregnancy of a veiled woman.

Kadiri told a recent cultural forum in Cairo that this kind of censorship is an alarming signal of a deteriorating artistic freedoms in the country.

'With a parliament of mostly Islamists, the newly gained artistic freedoms might be short-lived,' Egyptian visual artist Huda Lufti said, adding that artists should protect their revolutionary achievements by creating a lobby to pressure the Islamists.

Despite these growing concerns, renowned Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher is optimistic that the regional art scene will thrive.

'The new creative generation personifies our hopes to stand against certain worrying developments that are taking place right now,' Taher said.