Latest news with #independentFilm
Malay Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Malay Mail
Cairo's Zawya cinema keeps artistic ambition alive and screens indie films that others won't
CAIRO, June 4 — In the heart of Cairo, a small cinema has for over a decade offered a unique space for independent film in a country whose industry is largely dominated by commercial considerations. Zawya, meaning 'perspective' in Arabic, has weathered the storm of Egypt's economic upheavals, championing a more artistic approach from the historical heart of the country's golden age of cinema. Zawya was born in the post-revolutionary artistic fervour of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak. 'There was this energy where people wanted to produce and create, not just in cinema, but in all the arts, you could feel it,' said Zawya founder Youssef Shazli. In the time since, it has escaped a wave of closures – some forced – of art centres across the capital. Egypt had long been known as the Hollywood of the Arab world, but in the decades since its mid-century heyday, the domestic industry has largely been restricted to crowd-pleasing blockbusters. 'It's often said that we're lucky to have a large film industry, with infrastructure already in place,' said filmmaker Maged Nader. 'But the truth is this industry operates solely on a commercial logic,' leaving little room for independent filmmakers, he added. Yet Zawya has survived in its niche, in part due to the relative financial stability afforded to it by its parent company Misr International Films. Founded in 1972 by Egyptian cinematic giant Youssef Chahine -- Shazli's great uncle -- the company continues to produce and distribute films. Young talent For Shazli, Zawya is 'a cinema for films that don't fit into traditional theatres'. But for young cinephiles like 24-year-old actress Lujain, 'it feels like home,' she told AFP as she joined a winding queue into the larger of Zawya's two theatres. Since 2014, Zawya's year-round programming – including both local and international short films, documentaries and feature films – has secured the loyalty of a small but passionate scene. Its annual short film festival, held every spring, has become a vital space for up-and-coming directors trying to break through a system that leaves little room for experimentation. 'I didn't even consider myself a filmmaker until Zawya screened my short,' said Michael Samuel, 24, who works in advertising but says the cinema rekindled his artistic ambition. For many, that validation keeps them going. People arrive at the Zawya cinema in downtown Cairo on May 1, 2025. — AFP pic 'Zawya has encouraged more people to produce these films because they finally have somewhere to be seen,' said the cinema's manager, Mohamed Said. When Mostafa Gerbeii, a self-taught filmmaker, was looking for a set for his first film shoot, he also turned to the cinema. Without a studio or a budget, Zawya 'just lent us their hall for free for a whole day', he said, saving the young director 100,000 Egyptian pounds (around US$2,000) to rent a location. The heir The light of its marquee spilling onto downtown Cairo's Emad al-Din Street, Zawya is the 21st-century heir to a long artistic tradition that still lingers, though often hidden away in corners of the district's broad avenues. 'It's a unique neighbourhood with an equally unique flavour of artistic and intellectual life,' said Chihab El Khachab, a professor at the University of Oxford and author of the book 'Making Film in Egypt'. Starting in the late 19th century, the area was home to the city's biggest theatres and cabarets, launching the careers of the Arab world's most celebrated singers and actors. Today, its arteries flowing out of Tahrir square – the heart of the 2011 uprising – the neighbourhood is home to new-age coworking spaces and galleries, side by side with century-old theatres and bars. Yet even as it withstands the hegemony of mall multiplexes, Zawya cannot escape Egypt's pervasive censorship laws. Like every cinema in Egypt, each film must pass through a state censors before screening. 'Over time, you learn to predict what will slide and what won't,' Shazli said. But even the censors' scissors have failed to cut off the stream of ambition among burgeoning filmmakers. 'Around Zawya, there's a lot of talent – in every corner,' Shazli said. 'But what I wonder is: are there as many opportunities as there is talent? That's the real issue we need to address.'
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
In Cairo, the little indie cinema that could
In the heart of Cairo, a small cinema has for over a decade offered a unique space for independent film in a country whose industry is largely dominated by commercial considerations. Zawya, meaning "perspective" in Arabic, has weathered the storm of Egypt's economic upheavals, championing a more artistic approach from the historical heart of the country's golden age of cinema. Zawya was born in the post-revolutionary artistic fervour of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak. "There was this energy where people wanted to produce and create, not just in cinema, but in all the arts, you could feel it," said Zawya founder Youssef Shazli. In the time since, it has escaped a wave of closures -- some forced -- of art centres across the capital. Egypt had long been known as the Hollywood of the Arab world, but in the decades since its mid-century heyday, the domestic industry has largely been restricted to crowd-pleasing blockbusters. "It's often said that we're lucky to have a large film industry, with infrastructure already in place," said filmmaker Maged Nader. "But the truth is this industry operates solely on a commercial logic," leaving little room for independent filmmakers, he added. Yet Zawya has survived in its niche, in part due to the relative financial stability afforded to it by its parent company Misr International Films. Founded in 1972 by Egyptian cinematic giant Youssef Chahine -- Shazli's great uncle -- the company continues to produce and distribute films. - Young talent - For Shazli, Zawya is "a cinema for films that don't fit into traditional theatres". But for young cinephiles like 24-year-old actress Lujain, "it feels like home," she told AFP as she joined a winding queue into the larger of Zawya's two theatres. Since 2014, Zawya's year-round programming -- including both local and international short films, documentaries and feature films -- has secured the loyalty of a small but passionate scene. Its annual short film festival, held every spring, has become a vital space for up-and-coming directors trying to break through a system that leaves little room for experimentation. "I didn't even consider myself a filmmaker until Zawya screened my short," said Michael Samuel, 24, who works in advertising but says the cinema rekindled his artistic ambition. For many, that validation keeps them going. "Zawya has encouraged more people to produce these films because they finally have somewhere to be seen," said the cinema's manager, Mohamed Said. When Mostafa Gerbeii, a self-taught filmmaker, was looking for a set for his first film shoot, he also turned to the cinema. Without a studio or a budget, Zawya "just lent us their hall for free for a whole day", he said, saving the young director 100,000 Egyptian pounds (around $2,000) to rent a location. - The heir - The light of its marquee spilling onto downtown Cairo's Emad al-Din Street, Zawya is the 21st-century heir to a long artistic tradition that still lingers, though often hidden away in corners of the district's broad avenues. "It's a unique neighbourhood with an equally unique flavour of artistic and intellectual life," said Chihab El Khachab, a professor at the University of Oxford and author of the book "Making Film in Egypt". Starting in the late 19th century, the area was home to the city's biggest theatres and cabarets, launching the careers of the Arab world's most celebrated singers and actors. Today, its arteries flowing out of Tahrir square -- the heart of the 2011 uprising -- the neighbourhood is home to new-age coworking spaces and galleries, side by side with century-old theatres and bars. Yet even as it withstands the hegemony of mall multiplexes, Zawya cannot escape Egypt's pervasive censorship laws. Like every cinema in Egypt, each film must pass through a state censors before screening. "Over time, you learn to predict what will slide and what won't," Shazli said. But even the censors' scissors have failed to cut off the stream of ambition among burgeoning filmmakers. "Around Zawya, there's a lot of talent -- in every corner," Shazli said.
CNET
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
10 Great Horror Movies to Watch on Prime Video Right Now
Coherence is a huge favorite here at CNET and it's a terrifying watch. Not necessarily in the traditional, gory, horrific sense but more in terms of the concepts. It's a multiverse movie released before multiverses were cool and is not what you expect. Coherence is the kind of movie you'll finish and immediately rewatch to try to rewire your brain. It's a fantastic achievement and a must watch.
National Post
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Post
Chloë Sevigny talks indie films, new movie Bonjour Tristesse
Article content Over a career spanning 30 years, Chloë Sevigny has defined herself as a champion of independent film. Witness a short list of notable movies: Kids (1995); Boys Don't Cry (1999); The Brown Bunny (2004); Broken Flowers (2005); and Beatriz at Dinner (2017). Article content Article content Her newest, the limited release Bonjour Tristesse, likewise proves that small can be beautiful. From writer-director Durga Chew-Bose, it's based on Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel of the same name. Another film adaptation was released in 1958, starring Deborah Kerr and Jean Seberg. Article content Article content The new movie is set on the French seaside. Teenager Cécile (Lily McInerny), her father (Claes Bang) and his girlfriend (Naïlia Harzoune) are spending languid summer days captured with suitable sun-washed cinematography. Article content But things change when Sevigny's character, longtime family friend Anne, arrives. She's quite literally a buttoned-up fashion designer, wearing a crisp white shirt, pearl earrings and a tidy updo. Feeling threatened, Cécile devises a plan to drive Anne away. But she doesn't expect what happens next. Article content Sevigny spoke to Postmedia about Bonjour Tristesse, her love of independent film, and the idea of joining a blockbuster franchise like Marvel. Article content A: Cécile is growing into womanhood, but she doesn't quite understand it yet. And she's very threatened by this woman coming into her life. I was thinking a lot about my mother and how she would be lovingly critical in the way that she just wants me to have the opportunities that are available to me, to take full advantage of them. How she comes from a different generation, and what she deems as a way of getting something that one would want. So I think it's more interesting, this kind of generational relationship. Article content Q: In this movie, Anne over-parents Cécile. But I remember you in Kids — your character there was very under-parented. How do you think the teenage years then compare to now? Article content A: It's funny when people say that about Jenny from Kids, because I always imagined her as a girl who went to (a private school) and had a really good family. I think it's because you don't see her household, and in New York at that time there were kids from different upbringings coming together. Article content But how things have changed? I imagine social media and all of that is rather challenging. Even for me it's hard, as far as comparing and despairing. I find the immediacy with which we have to respond to people — vis-a-vis texting or emailing or all these other ways we talk — quite stressful. So I think it's harder to just be in the moment. Article content A: They're just the opportunities that have come my way. I'm just looking for distinct voices, original voices, something new. To me this felt like a (Éric) Rohmer film or a (Pedro) Almodóvar film. I felt this was like a foreign film written in the English language, which I don't come across often. Also, this character is something that I haven't played often. I thought Durg was a really interesting new voice in movies, and I just wanted to be there to help support her.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Surgery, real sex and water sports: Louise Weard on her four-hour camcorder trans film Castration Movie Part One
When Louise Weard began shooting her debut film in 2023, she envisaged it as a snappy, 90-minute portrait of a group of queer and transgender friends in Vancouver. Now, Castration Movie, a crowdfunded camcorder epic made for less than C$60,000 (£33,000), runs four-and-a-half hours. And that's just part one. When the entire magnum opus is finished later this year, Weard estimates it will clock in at more than 12 hours. Take that, Béla Tarr. Watch your back, Rivette. Not that anyone could mistake Castration Movie for slow cinema. 'It's not as if I'm asking you to watch farmers in a field for 20 minutes,' says the 31-year-old director over coffee in an east London cafe. Indeed not: the first hour-and-a-half follows a budding 'incel' as he sinks deeper into the manosphere. The narrative focus then switches abruptly to a trans sex worker, Michaela 'Traps' Sinclair, played by Weard. Michaela's abrasive exterior conceals a yearning for motherhood and intimacy; she may have the tongue of Joan Rivers and the decorum of Divine, but she's as fragile as Edith Piaf. 'People are always relieved when they find out I'm nothing like Michaela,' says Weard, whose background is in Canadian underground horror. 'She's the nightmare version of me.' The film mixes Cassavetes-level rawness, a dazed Warholian languor and quotable banter worthy of Kevin Smith, including a nutty conversation about Dune, as well as a morbid Tinder date that gives maximum cringe. With its scenes of unsimulated sex, water-sports, self-harm (Weard is seen stubbing out a cigarette on her thigh) and the graphic aftermath of surgery, Castration Movie's list of trigger warnings is longer than some films' scripts. It's all shot with the same handheld Hi8 camera on which Weard's parents filmed home movies when she was growing up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She digs it out from her bag and passes it across the table. 'Go ahead, play with the zoom,' she says. 'You get a clean image where you can see the micro-expressions of what someone's thinking.' Obeying those instructions, I crash-zoom on to an extreme closeup of her. Dressed in a white blouse with blonde hair pulled back, a silver nose-ring and shrewd eyes behind dainty glasses, she is a dead ringer for the sardonic 22 Jump Street star Jillian Bell. Many of the scenes in Castration Movie push incidents from Weard's own life to imagined extremes. One episode in the second instalment shows a woman reacting with horror when her skateboarder partner comes out as trans and asks to be called Tiffany. 'I came out when I was 27,' says Weard. 'I was in the middle of doing the dishes. My girlfriend at the time was an angel, so supportive and excited for me. But the film takes real-life situations and asks: what are the worst intrusive thoughts you could have in this moment? What's the worst possible outcome?' From this emerges its purpose: to coax audiences into empathising with characters who are their moral, ideological and political opposites. 'Castration Movie has been hailed as this important trans work,' says Weard, who cast fellow trans directors Vera Drew (The People's Joker) and Alice Maio Mackay (T Blockers) in the film; Lilly Wachowski, co-creator of the Matrix franchise, also contributed to the crowdfunding campaign. 'Then the movie opens and you don't see a single trans person on screen for the first 90 minutes.' There is a logic to such seemingly perverse choices. 'Each chapter is training the audience how to watch the next section,' she says. 'Seeing this cis guy experience gender failure, you learn the beats of his story and you can apply them to Michaela, too. What I'm saying on a deeper level is that there are those at the margins who we don't want to think about, but who are the same as us. We're all people, right? We all share some universal experience of what it means to be human. In part two, there is a Terf and a detransitioner and an adult baby diaper lover. I want to show the shared humanity between them. They're all a part of me. I even gave the incel my old name.' The picture's leap in scale from thumbnail sketch to vast fresco occurred early on. Weard was showing a producer friend the scene in which a trans man on the eve of having top surgery is eulogising the breasts that have served him well, giving thanks for all the free beers and smokes that came his way because of them. 'I was fast-forwarding through the footage and my friend was, like: 'Louise, stop. I want to watch the whole thing.' When it was over, he said: 'You're not allowed to cut a fucking second of this.' I pointed out that if I didn't, this was going to be a 12-hour movie.' And he said: 'Well then, I guess you're making a 12-hour movie.'' That noun is key. 'Calling it Castration Movie undercuts the intimidation of the running time,' she reasons. 'This isn't a film. This is definitely a movie.' The crowds who have been cramming into clubs and basements to watch it, hunkering down in beanbag chairs and ordering pizza during the intermissions, seem to agree. 'People tell me afterwards that it was the hardest they've ever laughed in a movie and the hardest they've ever cried. I want to keep that going. I'd love people to also feel it was the most turned on they've ever felt while watching a movie. Or the angriest.' Her hopes that the picture will have crossover appeal are not unrealistic. 'In New York, we'd have, like, 100 trans women showing up to watch it together,' she says. 'That never happens. Some of these girls aren't leaving their house to do anything else that's community-oriented. But I don't think the movie will alienate viewers who aren't part of that, so now it's going out to a broader audience.' Having been seen in the UK in festival or club settings, it will play next month at the Prince Charles Cinema in London – not in the venue's queer strand but as part of its Bleak Week season alongside such diverse titles as Trainspotting, There Will Be Blood and Watership Down. And there is always the laptop option. The movie was released initially as a pay-what-you-like download with a C$1.50 minimum fee, and continues to be available in that format. Why? 'Because it should be!' Weard says blithely. 'I want people to see it. I'll have a message from someone in Brazil who can't afford the dollar, and if they reach out I send them a free link. People in Ukraine tell me the movie means a lot to them. A trans woman in Hong Kong said it reminded her of her friends. It's crazy to have made something so hyperspecific to my experience and to find people around the world laughing at the same jokes.' Her concern now is what will happen once she puts Castration Movie to bed. 'What do I do next? I joked with a friend about getting a job doing Hallmark Christmas movies from now on. Because where else can I go after my 12-hour masterpiece?' Castration Movie is screening in the UK and Ireland in May and June. Details here. It is available to download here.
