Since the invention of cinema and turning it into an independent art, which came at a time when most Arab countries were colonized and going through wars and were to some extent unintelligent and poor. Yet despite all these facts, Egypt wanted to take a different and positive road toward the new art.
The first Egyptian movie goes back as far as the early twenties, which means it came at the same time that the international cinema was starting in different parts of the world like France and the United States of America.
According to the London daily Elaph, the Egyptian cinema started producing films long before international film festivals were created, which means that the Egyptian cinema was a major and independent element and not dependent. It continued moving toward perfection, because it was making at least 10 movies every year back then and it was nominated to win awards in the international cinema festivals. Even though Egyptian cinema stands in the dark side now, it still holds the base and the ability to bring out good productions that was inherited through generations.
An independent movie done by young people called “Awqat Faragh” (Free Time), is considered among the low movies, which was produced in the mid of 2006 and many movie theaters are showing it on their screens. The scenario writer is young 19 years old ‘Omar Jamal’ and production is by Muhammad Mustafa. The entire film casts are young and it was their first experience in front of a camera excluding the actress “Randa Al Behairi” who had minor roles in a number of movies.
The question remains is how come someone like the famous producer Hussein Al Qala who was behind the production of many Egyptian movies during the 80’s and 90’s attended to such risky attempts. He encouraged those young and inexperienced actors; therefore, he agreed pay for the production of the film and as he puts it “it’s only ink on papers”.
The first thing that pulls the audience to the movie is the simplicity and realism. The main characters in the movie are ‘Hazem’ a rich young man that the whole group ‘his friends’ rely on, then comes ‘Ahmad’ comes from a very poor family who lives on a dream that one day things will get better for him and he falls in love with ‘May’.
On the other hand ‘May’ is realistic and tries to be stable with her thoughts and behavior. The other characters are ‘Tareq’ who lives an easy life with his divorced mother and ‘Mina’ who lives a conflicting life styles for instance one day she put the ‘Hijab’ (Muslim women head cover) and another where she’s laying in her lover’s arms looking for lost affections.
The roles of the characters are real to some extent and the writer didn’t need to go far to write the script, where he had to look into the lives of his friends in high school and at the university in order to come out with real stories.
One of the best things in the movie is the song “Dawayer” (Circles), written by the poet Abed Al Rahman Al Abnodi and composed and sang by the Lebanese singer Marwan Khouri.
The movie is consider with all its positive and negative views as the one of the best experiences of young writers and actors, because it holds a real view of how cinema should be made. It also attempts to be realist in their views and in bringing real life experiences. It is needless to say that the Egyptian cinema critics nominated the movie as the best film of 2006.
