One of the new features of the 41st edition of the Cairo Film International Film Festival (CIFF), which ended a few days ago, is the signing of the Charter for inclusion and diversity in the cinema and the audiovisual carried by the 50/50 collective and announced from the festival opening ceremony, with the projection of a video relating the role of women in the birth of Egyptian cinema.
After a little more than fifty festivals around the world, including those of Cannes, Locarno, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, Saint-Sébastien, London, Sarajevo, Los Angeles, Rome and New York, and wanting to be a festival in accordance with its time and with the values it advocates, the CIFF is the first Arab world festival to sign the charter for inclusion and diversity Cinema and the audiovisual of the 50/50 collective which was launched in Cannes in May 2018 by the association The second look And is supported by 300 film personalities, both actors, as directors, producers, distributors and technicians.
Having noticed that in this world of cinema, there is very strong male domination, with in addition a great disparity of wages and stamps, and taking advantage of the Weinstein affair for ” Transform a moment into movement »,, in ” going beyond the sole subject of sexual violence ” For ” move forward on concrete measures “the 50/50 collective aims, by giving the figures, to emphasize these disparities that exist within this sector and therefore allow greater equality between men and women in this environment.
As part of this charter, festivals undertake to work for parity men women in their teams, including during the recruitment of volunteers, to improve the transparency of the selections of film selections and to publish statistics for this purpose.
Why did you make the decision to sign this charter? What was the motivation of the festival? Apart from giving figures, will this have an impact on the festival programming?
Ahmed Shawky, artistic director of CIFF, tried to answer these questions: “ Our festival with close relations with the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF), which with the Cannes Film Festival, was behind this 50/50 collective initiative, we asked them what were the conditions to join and we learned that:
1/ Regarding the festival’s work team, it had to understand at least 50% of women, but we discovered that with us the number of women is greater than the number of men. Indeed, 70% of the CIFF team are women, and 60% of the programmer team are women.
2/ Concerning the films, the charter requires transparency in the figures, but already with each edition, we give these figures, and we have no problem giving the percentage of films made by women, since we are convinced that women, both in the Arab world and elsewhere, make very good films.
I do not think that this signature will change something in the choice of our films, because in any case our absolute priority is quality. Above all at CIFF, we program good films, but it is obvious that we will give more importance to this criterion of parity. In any case, with the growing number of directors in recent years, logically the programming of the number of films made by women will increase. We will not do it on purpose, but it will be spontaneously ”.
Response, moreover, confirmed by the president of the Mohamed Hefzy festival himself, who insists that the quality of the films will always be the only selection criterion, but according to him, to know that it will be necessary to publish the figures will play a psychological role and at equal quality, the choice will be unconsciously focused on the films made by women to achieve this men’s parity.
In reality the signing of this charter is not surprising on the part of the CIFF, whose logo represents the goddess Isis, and who has shown over the years that he respected women and was even interested in promoting their rights.
Indeed, for example during the 2017 edition, the CIFF had taken part in the “International day for the elimination of violence against women And in collaboration with the National Women’s Council and the United Nations Women’s Office in Egypt, had participated in the launch of a media campaign to make known This orange day through Festival activities And to emphasize the positive role that the film industry could play in eliminating violence against women in Egypt and in the world.
For this 41st edition, the only Egyptian film in international competition, and which has won the public prize Youssef Cherif Rizkallah, was Let’s Talkproduced and produced by Marianne Khoury, therefore by a woman.
Delphyne Besse, founding member of the Collective 50/50 said: ” We are extremely happy that the Cairo Festival has decided to sign the Charter, thus showing its attachment to the question of equality and inclusion in the Arab region. We hope that many other festivals in the region will follow their example. »»
Can we hope that the Carthage Cinematographic Days (JCC) will be the next to sign this charter? After all, Tunisia is supposed to be the most avant-garde country with regard to women’s rights!
Neïla Driss
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