Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
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Sherif El-Azma, EG
City of Rice, 2010. Photo © Ilya Rabinovich.
The film mainly borrows its aesthetics from 1930s-1940s film noir and melodrama. Here, codes and conventions are reused and re-examined in an attempt to re-address the dynamic that allows for psychoanalytical reading between drives and motivations of the different characters. The era and genre also make a comment on the post-colonial bourgeoisie, where its presence was culturally ambiguous and its power play was clouded and estranged. The attempt here is to build a tension, through the craft of narrative film-making (with all its conventions in terms of the uses of cinematography, art direction and blocking), without succumbing to its tendency to gravitate towards an ultimate, humanistic meaning. "Desires float, suspend and frustrate themselves without generating any obvious emotional climax." (Sherif El-Azma)