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| Yasmina, sometimes known as 'The English Rose of Cairo', has over
twenty-five years of experience in the field of Egyptian oriental dance as a
performer, teacher and choreographer. Originally from the UK she spent many
years travelling and dancing her way around the Middle East before settling in
Cairo in 1995. Here she performed for many years with her orchestra, becoming
one of the city's best-loved dancers. Cairo is still Yasmina's home, where she
hosts dancers and dance groups from around the world and provides services
ranging from accommodation, choreography, training and coaching in oriental
dance, to publicity photography and music production. |
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Articles by Yasmina |
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Mohamed
Mounir (Insight Magazine)
In an industry crowded with brash young pretenders, it takes a particular blend
of originality and talent to stay at the top. Mohamed Mounir continuously
manages to reinvent himeslf whilst staying true to his roots. Insight asks him
how. As we speed toward the entrance to the Pyramids the sun is getting ready
to set and the days tourists have been dispatched back to their hotels. This is
the time of day when the guards that hang around the gate turn everyone away.
But before weve even drawn up to the barrier a universal cry greets the sleek
black BMW were driving in Its Mohamed Mounir! sombre faces light up, and were
ushered through, though not before hes had to get out and shake a dozen hands.
He does it willingly, but with the fortitude of someone whos overcome shyness
with difficulty. Once in front of the camera that shyness surfaces frequently,
but so too does the famous twinkle in those dark brown eyes. He has the
weathered look, coupled with the wiry frame and youthful spring to his step,
singular to touring musicians of a certain age and Mounir is the quintessential
musician. |
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Youssra
(Insight Magazine)
Legaa al Howa (A Meeting On Air) is the name of celebrated Egyptian screen idol
Youssras latest drama series, currently showing on small screens everywhere. It
is also what this reporter experienced, catching up with Youssra on the set and
chatting inbetween takes. In a mouth-watering fuschia outfit showing every
curve, the star was in her element, juggling make-up, rehearsals and rolling
cameras while still miraculously making sense.
You know youre in the presence of a consummate professional when the actor in
front of you wipes away a tear from the scene in which shes just performed
while simultaneously launching into an account of her most recent award
ceremony (in this case a lifetime achievement award picked up last month at the
prestigious Carthages Film Festival.) Youssras personality comprises an
intoxicating mixture: warmth, softness, sex appeal, fragile emotion and steel
all rolled into one. Its no surprise that she long ago found her lifes work in
front of the camera. Her talent at emoting is one that directors can rely on
with Youssra one take is often all it takes. Enter Hisham Selim as a would-be
suitor about whom her characters feelings are mixed. He delivers a series of
lines which he appears to have only learned minutes before, and his expression
to the casual observer is pretty dead-pan. But by the end of his speech a
full-on close up reveals Youssra with head tilted up, lip trembling and eyes
filled with tears. At the word cut the room bursts into spontaneous applause
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Jehane
Noujaime (Insight Magazine)
In a leafy side street in Garden City, just a stones throw from the fluttering
stars and stripes of the US embassy, 27-year-old award-winning director Jehane
Noujaim bends over her keyboard. Shes putting the final editing touches to a
film that has the potential to send a tiny ripple of disquiet, not just through
the corridors of that building across the way, but through the minds of all
those who still have faith in what has become the worlds biggest weapon of mass
destruction: the media. While news crews from around the world flooded into the
Middle East to cover the US invasion of Iraq, Noujaim and her Egyptian producer
Hany Aly Salama were given three months virtually unrestricted access to the
most important media offices in the region, Al Jazeera, filming minute by
minute the behind-the-scenes dramas unfolding daily, and documenting unique
footage, not only of the workings of a high profile newsroom, but of two
ideologies in conflict. Once it finds a distributor the resulting film, Reel
War, is likely to bring Noujaim careering back into the spotlight, a place shes
already found herself once as the director of the 2001 hit Startup.Com, which
won her the coveted Directors Guild Award, the most prestigious documentary
prize |
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Khaled el
Hagar (Cairo Times)
Room to Rent, the first full-length, English language feature film by Egyptian
director Khaled el Hagar, opened on general release in Britain last week.
Though it has received mixed reviews in the press, theres no doubt that its
attracted attention. Dealing with the fortunes of an Egyptian abroad, it might
have been viewed with interest here in Egypt, but its content has ensured an
automatic ban by the censors. Ali is a young Egyptian script-writer trying hard
to get his first break into the movies, whilst simultaneously arranging a
desperate marriage of convenience before his visa to stay in Britain expires.
The plot could be Khaled el Hagars own auto-biography except that actually his
marriage to his English wife (costume designer Janice Rider) took place after
they met here in Egypt eleven years ago, and his debut as a director began with
several short films that were screened and won awards in film festivals around
the globe. But the film does reflect his search for identity and coming to
terms with a foreign culture. If I told the true story of my beginnings in
London, he says dryly, it would have been quite boring a fifteen minute piece
in black and white!..... |
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Nelly Karim
(Insight Magazine)
Nelly Karim may have been through a lot over the past year, but in her
fine-boned, pale face, a little puffy with fatigue, those extraordinary hazel
eyes still sparkle. Dressed casually in jeans and a denim jacket, reaching
periodically for her cigarette pack (the ballet dancers vice), she answers
questions frankly and with a faint air of resignation. Things, you get the
feeling, have really been tough. Still, Nelly is a survivor, and this year her
star is set to soar. Its not true that Ive left the ballet company, shes quick
to stress. I just took some time off to pursue other goals. But dance is what I
love and I feel quite guilty that Ive spent so much time away. They have been
very understanding with me. Though she may not have been gracing the Opera
stage, her public profile has increased dramatically with parts in two recent
TV serials. |
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Kazem el
Seher (Insight Magazine)
I wrote my music by candle-light, and I wrote with rockets and warheads
screaming over our rooftop. At night when I went to bed I would put all my
manuscripts in one room, with a note beside them describing what I wanted done
with them. Then Id sleep in another part of the house. That way, if I was
killed during the night, my music would be saved. |
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