Masāfāt Screening: Out on the Street + Q&A

The screening isfollowed by a Q&A with film directors Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk with 33-33 (formerly St John's Sessions) Founder/Director Chris Vaughn.

Out on the Street (Barra fel shari') is a film about a group of workers from one of Egypt’s working-class neighborhoods, Helwan. In the film, ten working-class men participate in an acting workshop. Through the rehearsals, stories emerge of factory injustice, police brutality, courts that fabricate criminal charges, and countless tales of corruption and exploitation by their capitalist employers. On a rooftop studio overlooking the heart of Cairo—presented as a space between fact and fiction—the participants move in and out of character as they shape the performance that engages their daily realities. Out on the Street interweaves scenes from the workshop, fictional performances, and mobile phone footage shot by a worker intended as evidence for the courts to stop the destruction of his workplace. This hybrid approach aims to engage a collective imaginary, situating the participants and spectators within a broader social struggle.

Born to an Egyptian father and a Polish mother, Jasmina Metwaly is a Cairo-based artist and filmmaker, and member of the Mosireen collective. She works in video and film, and has recently started drawing again. She likes to work with people and their histories, texts, archives, images, scripts and drawings. She is interested in how stories create stories, and how they leave the space of one reality and enter another, intertwining the boundaries of both. Rooted in performance and theatre, her works focus on process-based practices that have a social function that generates tension between participants and audiences.

Philip Rizk is a filmmaker and writer based in Cairo. Together with Jasmina Metwaly, he directed the feature film Out on the Street, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and was part of the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Rizk is a member of the Mosireen video collective. His texts have appeared online, in journals and in collected volumes, including ‘Uncommon Grounds – New Media and Critical Practices in the Middle East and North Africa’ (IB Tauris, 2014). In November, 2015, Rizk’s audio installation A Colonial Landscape accompanied Tobias Zielony’s photography exhibition of the same name at Fotohof, Salzburg. He is currently working with Metwaly on a new project entitled On Trials.

Out on the Street, dir Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, 2015, 71 mins

Masāfāt Music Pass: attend all four Masāfāt music events for £40

Masāfāt is a two-part festival taking place in London and Cairo this September. The festival is designed to create an open-ended, international platform to foster artistic and professional exchange between independent artists and professionals across the Middle East, North Africa and the UK.