The Luxor Egyptian & European Film Festival is organized by Noon Foundation for Culture and Arts (NOONCA) with the contribution of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture as well as public and private organisms in Egypt and Europe. The first edition of the festival will be held from the 17th to the 22rd of September 2012.
The festival’s main goal is to foster the knowledge and diffusion in Egypt of high quality cinematographic and audiovisual works directed by Egyptian and European filmmakers. The Luxor Egyptian & European Film Festival seeks to encourage Egyptian and European directors through the prizes awarded and to attract a new audience for Cinema, in Higher Egypt.
Noon Foundation for Culture and Arts has chosen the city of Luxor for this festival, dedicated to Egyptian and European cinema, to acquire a new audience in a region where movie theatres have almost disappeared. This choice has also been validated by the enthusiasm and support that the local and national cultural authorities have demonstrated for this initiative. In addition, a specific action will be undertaken with Luxor’s youth to involve them in the event’s organization as well as train those who wish in the cinema trade through their participation to various workshops.
Despite the absence of movie theatres in Luxor, the authorities involved will provide the festival with a number of locales: the Congress Hall which will be equipped for the occasion, Luxor’s House of Cultures as well as the esplanade of one of the prestigious Luxor temples, the temple of Luxor or of Karnack, for open-air projections. Furthermore, projections will be organized on the western bank of the Nile in Luxor as well as in the cities of Esna and Armant, via projection caravans.
Luxor, or ancient Thebes, which is classified in the UNESCO World Heritage, is not solely dedicated to the celebration of ancient Egypt, it is also a city which today counts 600.000 inhabitants and is spectacularly transforming.
The stakes are high: they are to whet the appetite of the Higher Egyptian audience to discover European cinema, with its richness, talents and diversity but also to promote the Egyptian cinema which no longer reaches its natural audience in Higher Egypt, after the disappearance of movie theatres in the last decades.
Professional meetings and training workshops will be organized during the festival, to enable the transfer of new technologies in the cinema and audiovisual domains.
The Festival will present more than 50 films and will receive around a hundred guests from Europe and Egypt, among who numerous directors, actors, professionals as well as representatives of the most important Egyptian and European media.
