Latest News!

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• My love for you, Egypt, increases by the day, an excerpt from Voices from the Revolution will be screening at the Twin Cities Arab Film Fest on opening night, November 10th, 2011, along with the film 18 Days.
  
  
• Egyptian company Al-Ismaelia has offered to help with filming locations for Voices from the Revolution. I am particularly excited about this potential collaboration as I fully believe in and support their ambitious and important mission. Al-Ismaelia aims to revive Downtown Cairo as a destination for all Egyptians to live, work, shop and socialize. Focusing on developing the district as a meeting point for the intellectual, artistic and cultural societies in Cairo.
  
  
• My love for you, Egypt, increases by the day, an excerpt of Voices from the Revolution will be screened in "Fluid Spaces", curated by Charlotte Bank, a cooperation between AlFilm Arab Film Festival Berlin and IFA Gallery Berlin. The screening will take place on November 8th at 19:00 at IFA Gallery. I will be there for a Q&A presentation.
  

• I am happy to announce that production company Tourist with a Typewriter has come on board with Saeed Taji Farouky as Executive Producer!

• Musician Marc Fantini has come on board as the sound artist for this project! His background in experimental music brings a rich conceptual element to the project by bridging urban and digital sounds which evoke abstract dreamscapes.
  

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About the Project:

I have spent many years wandering, exploring, and documenting abandoned and deteriorated architecture in Cairo. My fascination with these structures lies not only in their particular aesthetic and the memories they hold but also in the reality that they represent. As I walk through numerous such spaces, I visibly see the physical and psychological effects Egyptians have experienced for a long time; inhabitants of Cairo are confronted with static spaces frozen in an undefined realm that have, undoubtedly, affected their overall well-being. The lack of regard for architecture and infrastructure has confused the Egyptian identity, however, in the wake of recent events Egyptians are, for the first time, reclaiming their identity by reclaiming their built environment. The sudden change in attitude prompted, for me, an interest in investigating the connection between emotional states and urban surroundings through the project: Voices from the Revolution.

    

During the recent uprising in Egypt in 2011, speak2Tweet allowed Egyptians to post their breaking news and opinions on Twitter via voicemail despite countrywide Internet cuts. The result was thousands of heartfelt messages from Egyptians recording their emotions by phone. This experimental film presents selected speak2Tweet messages prior to the fall of the Mubarak regime on February 11, 2011 and juxtaposes them with the abandoned structures that represent the long-lasting effects of a corrupt dictatorship. It attempts to depict the harsh reality of the physical state of the city and addresses the role that the urban infrastructure plays in instigating unrest amongst its inhabitants. The project reveals the hopes and fears of a people who have yet to discover the outcome of their revolution within the context of their crumbling surroundings. This is not another documentary about the revolution but rather an artistic presentation revealing the collective psyche during a specific time-frame.

Other Ways You Can Help:

Please spread the word. This project is not only a creative project but also attempts to preserve important historical memories. Share this with your friends and don't forget to use the sharing tools, this project does use social networking as a concept after all!

Join our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Voices-from-the-Revolution/150658441691544.

Background:

The January 25th Revolution in Egypt has spurred a debate over whether or not Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can claim credit for the uprising. Doubts over the uprising?s occurrence without these tools have been raised. However, this debate seems irrelevant given the obvious fact that these tools played a significant role, not only in spreading information at an uncontrollable speed, but also in providing Egyptians a voice they never had. The world had front row seats and the opportunity to engage in revolution regardless of nationality and geographic location.

I was particularly intrigued by the speak2Tweet platform because it achieved something entirely different from the tools preceding it. It reached out to people all over the country, not only the expected demographic of young, tech-savvy revolutionaries. Egyptians were using it more to vent their fears, express their hope, recite poetry, sing love songs, and express concern for their country. An accumulation of emotionally moving recordings preserved the moments of the fragile emotional state of the Egyptian psyche. As an Egyptian abroad during the revolution, I obsessively listened to the voicemails as they were being posted. They had such an emotional impact on me that I felt the need to share them. This project attempts to raise attention to the moving messages buried amidst the Internet noise of revolution-related activity.

  

Who We Are:

Heba Amin: Artist, Director
Heba Amin is an Egyptian artist whose work seeks to map collective memory as it relates to the built environment. Her theoretical and studio-based work addresses themes related to urban planning, mapping, migration/immigration and language as an aesthetic database to explore junctures, failures, and flawed memory.

Amin has taught at the University of Minnesota, the American University in Cairo, and the Hochschule fur Technik und Wirtschaft in Berlin. She is a 2009 Rhizome Commissions grant recipient and a 2010 Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) scholar. She has exhibited her work internationally and has attended several workshops and residencies in Europe. Amin currently resides in Berlin. More information about her work can be found at www.hebaamin.com.

Saeed Taji Farouky: Executive Producer
Saeed Taji Farouky is an award-winning Palestinian/British documentary filmmaker and co-founder and Director of documentary production company Tourist With A Typewriter.  Saeed's work focuses on issues of human rights and social justice, often in the Middle East and North Africa.??
Farouky is a 2011 Senior TED Fellow, was named Artist-in-Residence at Tate Britain 2009/2010 and Artist-in-Residence at the British Museum 2007 & 2009. His latest feature documentary The Runner is backed by the Irish Film Board and the Arab Fund For Arts And Culture and is an Irish/Norwegian/French co-production. It will be theatrically released internationally in 2012.

Marc Fantini: Sound Artist
Marc Fantini was born in Switzerland where he studied classical percussion at the conservatory and contemporary drumming in Ecole de Jazz et de Musiques Actuelles (EJMA) in Lausanne . He is a current member of the band Monno and also collaborates with other experimental performers, musicians and dancers like Contact Gonzo, Soichiro Mitsuya, and Joke Lanz . He tries to create a synthesis between the tribal aspect of drumming and the technological side of computer composition and improvisation in order to create new and relevant atmospheric sounds-scapes . Fantini currently lives in Berlin.