Stage demonstration

Gehad Hussein listens to a voice of discontent

As the opposition grows stronger, the monitoring of the current regime becomes more intense. And if a state-owned institution rejects art for political reasons, be sure that the artist will become an effective, critical component of the backbone of the country's opposition -- and thus, influential enough to be censored.

The revolution took place with the aim of getting rid of censorship and not only allow, but also promote freedom of expression, especially in the intellectual and artistic scene. Any setback in that sense is faced with scrutiny and a public scandal on social networks and/or the media.

The theme of this story is a random, ever-changing collection of Egyptians with an undying love for their country and a passion for music. Together, they are called "Mashroua Choral" or "The Choir Project" (TCP). Their artistic director is Salam Youssri, a 30-year-old writer and director. Youssri explains that the aim of TCP is "collective participation. We want to create a safe atmosphere for people to freely express how they feel and what they think."

Being financially independent and dependent on volunteer work, the creation and execution of the choir's projects and songs takes place in workshops and so are free from censorship. Time and place are announced through Facebook and Twitter and anyone can join. "These people learn how to listen to each other and how to stop judging others in a superficial manner," Youssri elaborates. The group sits together and starts brainstorming about what it wants to sing about -- and voil?, a song and sometimes even a whole show is created.

In May 2010, TCP was founded as the Complaints Choir with 22 members who wrote, composed and sang four songs, complaining about everything that was annoying them. The show was portrayed by the media as "singing demonstrations on a stage", as the content of the songs heavily criticised the Mubarak regime. Journalists felt like this was a different way of voicing people's discontent with the political situation -- far from the standard "20 people on the stairs of the Journalists Syndicate" prototype demonstrations at the time. Immediately after the show, State Security threatened the venue Townhouse Gallery, and consequently, it became very hard for TCP to find a venue to perform in, so their songs were mainly published online.

The Choir Project kept rolling, bearing new themes every time, like "Advertising Choir" and "Proverb Choir" and getting invitations to Oman, London, Munich, Berlin, Beirut and Istanbul. Members increased, but the real boost in numbers occurred right after the revolution in their workshop called Utopia where the members sang about the kind of life they wished they had in Egypt.

It seemed like the time of censorship was over, yet, to everyone's disappointment, the mentality of self-censorship still bore its fruits at the core of the state's institution, even those related to art.

As the Cairo Opera House prepared its Ramadan events, it included some revolutionary artists like Rami Essam, Eskenderella and TCP. The performances of the two artists ended with the audiences chanting against the military and army, yet with no direct action or violence. The people working at the Cairo Opera House were not used to this kind of upheaval since they have been working all their lives in a governmental state environment. Hence, the opera's PR manager called Youssri one day before the TCP show, asking him about the content of the songs they were going to perform and informing him that they were not welcome to perform the next day.

According to Youssri, the State Security did not directly call the Opera House and ask them to stop the show, but the people there were used to stopping any opposition before it could get started. Immediately, he wrote a statement about the incident and published it on the Facebook page of the choir. As the social wildfire spread, some journalists started writing about the incident and the story was extremely popular in only a couple of hours. After noticing the heat, the authorities of the Cairo Opera House contacted Youssri again in order to sort out the incident and allowed the Choir Project to perform, after the institution officially apologised for the inconvenience which they branded as a "managerial error."

Shadi El-Husseini, a frequent member of TCP, was not surprised by the incident. "I felt like this would be the normal reaction of a state-owned facility, especially the Hanager Theatre [where the performance took place]. It is just the continuation of the old regime that is still present. It is their loss anyway. But all in all, I believe that this is a positive experience because in the end we were allowed to perform without any censorship."

Youssri further explained: "The move was not specifically against The Choir Project, but rather a fast reaction to what happened in the previous performances with Rami Essam and Eskenderella. As our group is famous for being on the side of the opposition, the Opera House thought it had to act somehow before things got out of hand, which is all a hallucination." He believes that the workers at the Opera House still need to get used to the new things that are going on and to the heat and pressure that social media can trigger.

"In the end, this is our stage, the stage of the people. The Opera House noticed that the self-censorship it had been practicing has no basis," Youssri said.

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The conserved kinase SRPK regulates karyosome formation and spindle microtubule assembly in Drosophila oocytes

Advance Online Publication August 1, 2012 doi: 10.1242/?jcs.107979 In Drosophila oocytes, after the completion of recombination, meiotic chromosomes form a compact cluster called the karyosome within the nucleus, and later assemble spindle microtubules without centrosomes. Although these oocyte specific phenomena are also observed in humans, their molecular basis is not well understood. Here we report essential roles for the conserved kinase SRPK in both karyosome formation and spindle microtubule assembly in oocytes. We have identified a female sterile srpk mutant through a cytological screen for karyosome defects. Unlike most karyosome mutants, the karyosome defect is independent of the meiotic recombination checkpoint. Heterochromatin clustering found within the wild-type karyosome is disrupted in the mutant. Strikingly, a loss of SRPK severely prevents microtubule assembly for acentrosomal spindles in mature oocytes. Subsequently, bi-orientation and segregation of meiotic chromosomes are also defective. Therefore, this study demonstrates new roles of this conserved kinase in two independent meiotic steps specific to oocytes.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly cited and all further distributions of the work or adaptation are subject to the same Creative Commons License terms.

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United we stand - integrating the actin cytoskeleton and cell-matrix adhesions in cellular mechanotransduction

Advance Online Publication July 13, 2012 doi: 10.1242/?jcs.093716 July 1, 2012 J Cell Sci 125, 3051-3060. Ulrich S. Schwarz1,* and Margaret L. Gardel2,*

1BioQuant and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 19, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

2Physics Department, James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA ?*Authors for correspondence (ulrich.schwarz{at}bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de; gardel{at}uchicago.edu) Many essential cellular functions in health and disease are closely linked to the ability of cells to respond to mechanical forces. In the context of cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix, the forces that are generated within the actin cytoskeleton and transmitted through integrin-based focal adhesions are essential for the cellular response to environmental clues, such as the spatial distribution of adhesive ligands or matrix stiffness. Whereas substantial progress has been made in identifying mechanosensitive molecules that can transduce mechanical force into biochemical signals, much less is known about the nature of cytoskeletal force generation and transmission that regulates the magnitude, duration and spatial distribution of forces imposed on these mechanosensitive complexes. By focusing on cell-matrix adhesion to flat elastic substrates, on which traction forces can be measured with high temporal and spatial resolution, we discuss our current understanding of the physical mechanisms that integrate a large range of molecular mechanotransduction events on cellular scales. Physical limits of stability emerge as one important element of the cellular response that complements the structural changes affected by regulatory systems in response to mechanical processes.

Key words Funding

U.S.S. is a member of the Heidelberg cluster of excellence CellNetworks and is supported by the BMBF MechanoSys grant [grant number 0315501C to U.S.S.]. M.L.G. is supported by a NIH Director's Pioneer Award [grant number DP10D00354], Packard Fellowship and Burroughs Wellcome Career Award. Deposited in PMC for release after 12 months.

This article is part of a Minifocus on Mechanotransduction. For further reading, please see related articles: ‘Deconstructing the third dimension – how 3D culture microenvironments alter cellular cues’ by Brendon M. Baker and Christopher S. Chen (J. Cell Sci. 125, 3015-3024). ‘Finding the weakest link – exploring integrin-mediated mechanical molecular pathways’ by Pere Roca-Cusachs et al. (J. Cell Sci. 125, 3025-3038). ‘Signalling through mechanical inputs – a coordinated process’ by Huimin Zhang and Michel Labouesse (J. Cell Sci. 125, 3039-3049). ‘Mechanosensitive mechanisms in transcriptional regulation’ by Akiko Mammoto et al. (J. Cell Sci. 125, 3061-3073). ‘Molecular force transduction by ion channels – diversity and unifying principles’ by Sergei Sukharev and Frederick Sachs (J. Cell Sci. 125, 3075-3083).

© 2012. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

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Kruppel-like factor 4 is involved in cell scattering induced by hepatocyte growth factor

Advance Online Publication August 1, 2012 doi: 10.1242/?jcs.108910 Jun-Kai Lai, Han-Chung Wu, Yuh-Chiang Shen, Hsin-Ying Hsieh, Shu-Yi Yang and Chia-Che Chang*?*: Corresponding author: Chia-Che Chang, Ph.D.
, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, 250 Kuo-Kuang Road, Taichung 40227, TAIWAN; E-mail: chia_che{at}dragon.nchu.edu.tw; Tel: +886-4-22852022; Fax: +886-4-22853469 Hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor (HGF) is unique by inducing epithelial cell scattering, a cellular event pivotal to HGF-mediated invasive-growth response essential for embryonic development and metastasis. Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) is a multifunctional zinc-finger transcription factor involved in cell proliferation, differentiation and self-renewal. We herein present the first evidence for the functional connection between KLF4 and HGF-induced cell scattering. Particularly, we found that KLF4 was up-regulated by HGF in two independent epithelial cellular systems HepG2 and MDCK, whereas KLF4 knockdown inhibited HGF-induced E-cadherin suppression and cell scattering. Moreover, enforced nuclear KLF4 expression alone was sufficient to up-regulate KLF4, down-regulate E-cadherin and trigger scattering. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis further revealed that KLF4 induced suppression of E-cadherin transcription by directly binding to the E-cadherin promoter. Additionally, we proved that HGF-induced up-regulation of KLF4 transcription and cell scattering require activation of the MEK/ERK signaling pathway and the induction of early growth response 1 (EGR-1). At the mechanistic level, ChIP analysis validated a direct binding of EGR-1 to the KLF4 promoter for inducing KLF4 transcription; in turn, EGR-1-induced KLF4 binds to its own promoter, thus creating a positive feedback mechanism to sustain KLF4 expression and resultant cell scattering. Collectively, we conclude that KLF4 up-regulation by HGF represents a novel mechanism to mediate HGF-induced cell scattering and perhaps other associated events such as cell migration and invasion.

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Security in Sinai

A recent government decision that allows foreigners to invest in Sinai is moot without restoring stability in the strategic peninsula, writes Nesma Nowar

The Egyptian government agreed last week to allow foreigners to invest in Sinai with a maximum stake of 45 per cent in any Sinai-based project. Meanwhile, Egyptian capital in any project should not be less than 55 per cent.

Still, foreigners are not allowed to own land in Sinai, but they can run their ventures through concession contracts from the government.

For security reasons, the Egyptian government has historically banned foreigners from investing and owning land in Sinai. Even land ownership for Egyptians has been firmly controlled. Egyptian investors with a non-Egyptian parent, for example, cannot own land but can obtain concession contracts in Sinai.

Though last week's decision was welcomed by the business community as helping to spur investment in Sinai, the head of the North Sinai Chamber of Commerce, Abdallah Badawi, believes that the decision will not attract much investment.

"The matter which should be discussed first is how we can regain security in Sinai," Badawi told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We cannot speak about investment before restoring security."

Badawi added that the government decision should be accompanied by a bundle of incentives to boost investment. "The decision alone would not be able to attract any investments."

Naguib Said, head of the exporters division at the North Sinai Chamber of Commerce, shares a similar view. He said that the decision to allow foreigners to invest in Sinai is a positive one. However, "it came too late."

Said explained that the decision could have been applicable 20 years ago, when conditions in Sinai were relatively stable, but it would not do much in light of the current deteriorated security conditions in Sinai.

"Local investors are afraid of investing in Sinai themselves," Said told the Weekly. "How can we expect foreign investors to come and invest?" he asked.

Said explained that Sinai is not only a fertile land for tourism but also for a wide range of sectors, including mining, industry and agriculture.

Badawi agrees with Said. He said that Sinai is in need of labour intensive investment, such as construction and agricultural projects.

"The government should start investing in Sinai and thus attract private sector and foreigners to invest as well," Said said. He underlined the importance of introducing investment incentives, like tax exemptions and lower prices of electricity, natural gas and water granted to Sinai-based projects.

The government's decision comes against the backdrop of the establishment of a new national authority for the development of Sinai -- a body with a budget of LE1 billion.

Prime Minister Hisham Qandil stated last week that the new authority is set to endorse projects worth LE1.2 billion to be funded from the current 2012/13 budget, the Armed Forces and foreign parties.

Qandil pointed out that the projects would include establishing fishing ports, roads, schools, factories and wells.

Development in the Sinai Peninsula has consistently been hampered in recent years owing to its strategic location on the Egyptian-Israeli border.

Sinai and its development came into the spotlight after the deadly attack that killed 16 Egyptian border guards on 5 August.

Following the attack, the military launched Operation Eagle to clear Sinai of militant Islamist groups allegedly involved in the border attack.

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Anchor incognito

Opinions are divided over Maria TV, a new satellite television channel on which the all-female presenters are all fully veiled, writes Omneya Yousry

Maria TV is a women's cultural channel that broadcasts within the framework of Islamist religious ideas. Its presenters appear shrouded in long, flowing black robes and wearing a full face veil known as the niqab with black gloves to match, making them distinguishable only by their voices and their eyes.

The channel is run primarily by women, who operate the cameras, present the shows and interview female guests ranging from doctors to students of Islamic theology. However, these women cannot show their faces during broadcasts, and no men are allowed on air during the channel's all-female programming, not even on phone-ins.

The channel was launched in a period that has seen greater freedom for the media in Egypt and particularly for the appearance of veiled women on television, discouraged under the rule of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak. Veiled women can now present television programmes particularly within the niche market of community programming, though the minister of information has recently also allowed the appearance of veiled female presenters even on state TV.

According to Alaa Abdallah, executive director and media spokesperson for Maria TV, the channel's name derives from that of Maria the Copt, one of the wives of the Prophet Mohamed. "She was the first woman to have enjoyed the right of choice in religion," Abdallah said, noting that when the prophet was given Maria, a slave, by the Patriarch Muqawqis he married her and set her free, causing her to convert to Islam.

The Maria channel started broadcasting on 20 July, the first day of Ramadan, in daily slots of four hours from 12pm to 4pm on the existing Al-Umma Channel owned by Ahmed Abdallah, known by his nickname "Abu Islam." During the Mubarak period, Al-Umma TV was raided many times by the security forces, and financial troubles forced it to shut down in 2008. Abu Islam himself was detained at least four times, the longest being for 22 days.

The station relaunched last year when the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-conservative Salafis emerged as the most influential political forces in post-Mubarak Egypt. Maria TV was launched to coincide with the start of Ramadan, and it is designed by Abdallah as part of a broader effort to expand his religious pan-Arab station Umma TV.

"We had been thinking of the idea since 2007, but the political conditions at the time did not allow us to make it a reality," said Alaa Abdallah. "Today, our presenters consist of five women, all of whom wear the niqab on air, though of course we also have more employees. At the moment, we work on a voluntary basis, and what brings us together is the idea of Maria TV. We didn't know each other before the idea arose. Since I'm a daughter of Abu Islam, he suggested that we announce on Al-Umma TV our intention to launch a new channel dedicated to women wearing the niqab. After that, we created a Facebook group for the same purpose and started to meet as volunteers at the Al-Umma office."

Shows broadcast by the channel range from beauty programmes, in which the presenters discuss make-up tricks without actually showing any, to shows about medicine, marriage, politics, human development, culture and religion. There is a satirical show poking fun at major news stories that uses puppets. According to Abdallah, Maria TV presents a variety of programmes covering all areas of interest to the Muslim family. "We depend on specialisation: medical programmes are presented by doctors, and social programmes are presented by sociologists," she said.

There are now more than five million women wearing the niqab in Egypt, Abdallah said, and this means that the channel has a large potential audience. "We are against men dealing with women's issues, which is why we do not accept men on the channel. However, we have needed the help of men employed by Al-Umma TV to help with technical issues and preliminary training," she said.

"For people who say that we are encouraging sectarianism, they should know that we are all working voluntarily for an idea and not for money. I don't accept women who do not wear the veil, or women who wear ordinary veils, working with us because they don't represent us. We are not excluding them from any job opportunity. We promote the idea that Muslim women should wear the niqab, which we believe is an obligation for all Muslim women. We want Muslim women wearing the niqab to be seen as role models for Muslim wives and mothers in the Egyptian media."

"We do not have any agenda to exclude anyone. All of us are one family and belong to one homeland. But I want to give young women the ability to see women who wear the niqab on television and to say 'I want to be like that,' helping to create a generation that wants to be like us."

Financially, Maria TV was launched with the help of donations sought through announcements on Al-Umma TV. "Every month, Al-Umma TV announces that it is looking for donations to renew its contract with the NileSat satellite. We do not depend on businessmen. On the contrary, ordinary people should be able to contribute to this Islamic project that serves the Muslim nation," Abdallah explained. Programmes are recorded at the Al-Umma studios in a second-floor apartment of a building overlooking one of Cairo's biggest mosques in Abbasiya Square.

However, not everyone is happy about the format of Maria TV. According to Sami El-Sherif, former president of the Egyptian Radio and Television Federation and currently dean of mass communication at a private university, the channel is inconsistent with the Egyptian media.

"They suffer from limited material in terms of content, and they do not serve their target audience," El-Sherif said. "Basic media thinking tells us that there should be communication between the sender of a message and that message's target audience, and one of the media's most important means of communication is eye contact. This is lost in the case of Maria TV."

"Moreover, there is incoherence in the idea of women wearing the niqab on TV. The idea of the niqab is to preclude women from appearing in public. However, these women do appear. As a result, there seems to be a violation of the thinking behind the wearing of the niqab."

However, El-Sherif added that similar channels may well appear. Maria TV is part of a trend, he said, and it is one that can be expected to spread because of the absence of regulation and the low fees charged for satellite transmission, leading to a proliferation of niche channels.

Some women wearing the niqab also said that they did not think that the channel represented them and that it could be acting to isolate them from the rest of society. Hemmat Safwat, who wears the niqab and is a Quranic teacher, said that she didn't see why there was a need for the channel. Maria TV was making the mistake of separating fully veiled women off from the rest of society, she said, something that such women did not need.

"If they really only accept fully veiled women, then I dislike them as much as I dislike channels that only accept unveiled women," said Amir Yousri, a designer. "We are seeing exactly the same kind of discrimination here that they claim to oppose. I'm fine with the idea of having fully veiled TV presenters, as long as they are not on the national TV channels, however. It is normal that private channels might seek to represent a specific kind of ideology and direct their programmes to the corresponding audience."

Annie Ferrer, an American housewife resident in Egypt, said that "it's a private channel, so they can do whatever they want. I just think it's strange. Maybe it will give jobs to women who would otherwise not want to work around men, but from the viewer's perspective I don't think it matters whether the person talking is covered or not. They should be judged by the quality of the programmes they offer."

"As for the discrimination part, it could be considered as a form of positive discrimination, which tries to incorporate people who are usually discriminated against. This kind of positive discrimination is very common in Europe, where governments must have a certain percentage of women working for them, or there must be a certain percentage of disabled employees."

Andaleeb Fahmi, a Faculty of Mass Communications member at the Canadian Al-Ahram University, expressed her astonishment at the idea of the channel, which she considered to be going against the idea of thematic channels. "What is the point of a niqab channel? Is it to display their problems, or is it a channel to invite people to be religious or what?" Mariam Alfred, a computer science student, also had difficulty accepting this kind of channel. "It's discrimination," she said. "For sure they will discuss everything from a very closed perspective with no acceptance of difference."

"If they think women's faces should be hidden, why don't they also think the same about their voices," asked Amira Safwat, a housewife and mass communications graduate. "I also have a problem with the kind of guests they will likely provide, as these will exclude men and any non-fully veiled women, which means they will not show me more than 90 per cent of the community. It's a private channel, so they are free to do whatever they want. But I'm also free to change the channel if I don't like it," she added.

"I'm in favour of the concept, as long as they represent a sector of the community. They can discuss their point of view like the Christian channels do, which nobody accuses of fanaticism," said Passinte Amin, a bank employee.

"If they don't accept any women other than women who wear the niqab, will they broadcast ads that contain all social categories? If not, will they have to depend on donations permanently," asked Hossam Elhami, a mechanical engineer. "I'm not really sure if it makes a difference for them or for the audience what they present on TV or on the radio. But if they lose the visual part of television, for me it will be like listening to a radio presenter," he added.

Abdallah expects positive feedback to Maria TV, although she knows there will likely be people who are against the idea. "We haven't had any opponents up to now, though there was a Facebook page called 'Together to close Maria TV.'" We are aiming to reach out to a part of society that has not been targeted by the media before," she said.

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The Merchants of Venice

Samir Farid reports from the centre of the world

The 69th round of the Venice Film Festival (29 Augest-8 September) ?ê" the most prestigious in the world, and the third to take place annually after Berlin in February and Cannes in May ?ê" is this year celebrating 80 years since its first round.

Among the most memorable rounds in the history of Venice was that of 1983, which saw the first ever history-of-cinema programme in the world, curated by Francesco Bassinini, and that of 1949, when the grand prix was first called the Golden Lion after the lion of Saint Mark, the emblem of the city. Following years of disruption, the festival became established in 1980, competing with Cannes and Berlin.

The 2012 round is the first to be directed by the celebrated film scholar Alberto Barbera, taking over from the brilliant Marco Muller, who directed the festival for the last eight years. Barbera directed the festival in the period 1999-2002, after which he directed the National Film Museum in Turin. Barbera might see the festival differently to Muller, but a quick look at the programme is all it takes to realise he will maintain the success achieved by his predecessor. As is immediately evident, where Muller pays as much attention to quantity as quality and likes all kinds of films, Barbera is rather more interested in quality; and he prefers auteur films to others.

To celebrate 80 years since the first round, besides selections from the institution's archives entitled "80!", Barbera introduced a programme named Venice Classics, which will screen 20 restored films produced in the period 1974-84 in the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Japan and the Philippines as well as nine new feature-length documentaries on cinema from the US, Italy, France and Mexico.

Aside from films by Terrence Malick and Paul-Thomas Anderson, Marco Bellocchio, Brian de Palma and Takishi Kitano, the festival opened with the Qatari-American production The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair ?ê" an out-of-competition screening. This was the first time in film history that any of the three major festivals opened with an Arab coproduction; it reflects Qatar's ambition to establish itself as a powerful state with international influence despite its small size and population, capitalising on its oil revenues to interact with contemporary world civilisation. The coproduction took place through the Doha Film Institute, headed by Princess Al-Mayyassa bint Hamad Al-Thani who is well-known for her love of the arts, which also organises the annual Doha-Tribeca Film Festival.

In fact, thanks to the Arab Spring, there is a remarkable Arab contribution to Venice this year, from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Palestine and, for the first time, Libya and Saudi Arabia as well: feature-length documentaries by Libyan filmmaker Abdalla Omaish's (Witness: Libya, an American production, the first on the Libyan revolution by a Libyan) and Tunisian filmmaker Hinde Boujemaa (Ya man aach or "It was better tomorrow") outside the competition; the Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim El-Batout's El-Sheita Elli Fat (Winter of Discontent) in the Orizzonte or "Horizons" section; and, also outside the competition, Algerian filmmaker Djamila Sahraoui's Yema and Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour's Wadjda, a French and German production, respectively: the first fiction feature ever to be shot in Saudi territory.

***

El-Batout's El-Sheita Elli Fat is an example of the kind of western interest the Arab Spring has generated in Arab cinema. For even though such momentous events in one of the world's most important sources of energy and the site of fundamentalist-secular conflict can encourage attention to the work of such a young artist on the topic, it is also true that films are selected for screening at the major festivals based on artistic merit alone. If Youssri Nassrallah is among the icons of innovation in Egyptian cinema through the 1980s, then Ibrahim El-Batout is an icon of the independent cinema movement that emerged as the most important development in the 1990s; it may in fact be said that El-Batout is the godfather of independent cinema.

He arrived on the film scene from outside it and in 1996 began to make documentaries in some of the world's hottest spots. He made his first full-length fiction feature, Ithaka, named after CP Cavafy's poem, in 2004. With his second film, Ain Shams (Heliopolis), he managed to cross the Mediterranean and make a name for himself in the world at large ?ê" a reputation he confirmed with Hawi (Conjuror) in 2010. With his present, fourth film, El-Batout arrives at the world's most prestigious film festival.

The independent movements in art, music, theatre and literature as well as film played an essential role in forging the consciousness that led to the 25 January revolution. They were paralleled by political initiatives, notably Kifaya which started in 2004. With actors Amr Waked and Farah Youssef ?ê" the stars of El-Sheita Elli Fat ?ê" El-Batout was among those who took part in the 18-day sit-in that toppled former president Hosny Mubarak in 25 January-11 February, 2011; the closing scene was shot on 10 February in Tahrir Square. Here as elsewhere in El-Batout's work, the film does not follow a pre-written script; it emerges, rather, from place and time through the characters, gradually taking holistic form until it reaches completion. Like any postmodern filmmaker, El-Batout makes no distinction between fiction and documentary.

This is particularly true of El-Sheita Elli Fat, which documents the revolution subjectively and expresses an equally subjective, sharp position against the regime the revolution sought to change ?ê" the artist's absolute support for the revolution. This is achieved through three pivotal characters: Amr (Amr Waked), a computer wiz; his girlfriend Farah (Farah Youssef), a government TV anchor; and Adel (Saleh El-Hanafi), a State Security officer. Instead of a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, here as elsewhere El-Batout presents interpersonal relations whose dynamics determine the destiny of each. The situation is presented without apparent artifice: While Amr lives with his mother in an average middle-class apartment, Adel lives in a luxurious home with his wife, son and daughter and their Filipina maid.

The film opens on 25 January while Amr, on his computer screen, is watching a State Security detainee recount what happened to him in the way of torture by electric shock, among other means. At the same time Farah, on air, is trying to truthfully describe what is happening on the street while her colleague, in the same show, is misleading viewers to please his boss who demands that they should downplay the significance of the demonstrations. In the first half of the film, the action moves between January 2009 and January 2011, when Amr is arrested once again. As he watches the internet video, Amr remembers what happened to him in January 2009, when ?ê" unannounced and without trial ?ê" he was arrested and detained indefinitely for demonstrating against the Israeli war on Gaza that year. In the detention centre he too was subjected to torture, and there he made the acquaintance of Adel ?ê" who will not release him until he is convinced that Amr will cooperate with State Security, planting in him the doubt that Farah too cooperates; otherwise should couldn't have been a successful anchor. Amr leaves the detention centre with a broken spirit to find out that his mother has died of grief after looking for him everywhere and failing to find him.

On 28 January we hear portions of Mubarak's first address, sound only. Farah revolts against her employers' pro-regime policies, leaving her work to join the revolution. On 1 February Mubarak's second speech is heard, once again without pictures; we see the "popular committees" that have cropped up to replace the police throughout Cairo; we also see how State Security begins to deploy thugs against the protesters, with Adel overseeing the storage of knives and canes in an apartment near Tahrir Square. Thus begin the cycles of violence: protesters kill a thug in retaliation. On 10 February comes Mubarak's third ?ê" and last ?ê" address, followed by Omar Soliman's speech on 11 February in which he announces Mubarak's stepping down. Once again, the picture does not accompany the sound. Throughout the film the viewer sees the events of the revolution on non-Egyptian satellite channels through television sets in houses and in Adel's office. El-Batout uses subtitles to specify dates. Documentary footage of demonstrations in Tahrir Square accompany Soliman's speech.

Adel goes to see his family in the Red Sea resort of Ain Sokhna, where he has asked them to stay. We see the doctor Rafik William, who was arrested with Amr Waked on 28 January and testified that he did join the revolution because he wanted a better life for his as yet unborn son; subtitles tell us that Rafik was killed in the wake of the revolution, a month after the birth of his son. On Qaserelnil Bridge, near Tahrir Square, the actors-characters gather after they have finished making their film; the final shot shows Amr and Farah together again. Subtitles give figures for the dead, the injured, the lost and those in custody with the phrase "Still counting".

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