Campers filming their mock news broadcast
“Filmmaking is the act of tying images and sounds to produce meaning,” says Nadia Awad, Al-Bustan’s video instructor. At camp, the teen campers are working on understanding fully what goes into that process. Initially, they learned about Egyptian film production and compared film production in the Global North versus the Global South. Nadia informed the campers that Egypt had a role in film history since the beginning despite the common belief that film began in Hollywood.
In reality, India and Egypt had one of the earliest film industries and currently, Egypt has the largest film industry in the Arab world. The teens watched several film clips about Umm Kulthum and interviews with her. Umm Kulthum appeared in the first featured length Egyptian film in 1936. She became a cultural diplomat, through her music and her cinema work. Nadia then led a discussion about Umm Kulthum’s historical significance from a film history point of view; she also had the teens learning about media criticism.

Don’t miss their video premiere this Friday, July 12, 2013: 6-7:30pm!
Zeanah Rumman-Obeid
Intern
Drexel student