Staging the City: Cairene Women – Cairo Cinemagraphs
„Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.“ Robert Bresson
by Magdalena Kallenberger
The workshop ‚Staging the City: Cairene Women – Cairo Cinemagraphs‘ is part of Mashrou3 Hagar (Art Empowers!) workshop series and took place 21.06.2012 – 23.06.2012 at Darb 1718 . Mashrou3 Hagar (Art Empowers!) is an art project co-funded by Darb 1718 Contemporary Arts and Culture Centre and the European Union in Egypt.
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‚Staging the City: Cairene Women – Cairo Cinemagraphs‘ is an introductory workshop into the animation technique ‚cinemagraph‘. A Cinemagraph is an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.
In the workshop ‚Staging the City: Cairene Women – Cairo Cinemagraphs‘ we will investigate and discuss diverse narrative strategies from world acclaimed contemporary artists, photographers and filmmakers to develop our own concepts on how to stage the city and the Cairene women within the metropolitan setting. The introduction meeting will be followed up by a practical introduction into the animation technique „cinemagraph“. On the second and third day we will explore various sites of Cairo hunting for images that reveal the cities vivid diversity from a female point of view. On location we will observe and collect ambiguous aspects of every day moments of women’s lives in Egypt to be able to reflect and stage scenes that raise challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in Egyptian society. Our goal is to create stunning images capturing the essence of a person through their action or backdrop by distilling a temporal element. We will utilize a simple animation technique to emphasize details and provoke imagination. These images will enhance the discussion of the position of women in Egyptian society.
Knowledge needed: Film/Photography experience, basic Photoshop
Material requirements: any digital video camera, tripod, mac (Adobe Photoshop CS5), Quicktime Pro, FCP (optional)
Number of Participants: 8—12
Some Results
by Mona Lotfy
by Nadia Mounier
by Mohamed Saad
by Samer Kamel
by Samer Kamel
by Samer Kamel
by Nadia Mounir
by Hala El Sharouny
Mashrou3 Hagar (Art Empowers!) is an art project co-funded by Contemporary Arts and Culture Centre and the European Union in Egypt. The project is a collaboration between young Egyptian artists, women’s empowerment associations, cultural centres and European artists and curators who will conduct a number of information days and workshops at Darb 1718 to discuss burning issues regarding the role of art in women’s empowerment, gender equity and human rights.
The outcome of these discussions and training workshops will be art productions by the selected Egyptian artists that will be exhibited in three geographic locations from the North to the South of Egypt (Alexandria, Cairo and Aswan).
