Geneva, July 19, 2011
[To be checked against delivery]
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First I would like to express my deepest gratitude for your kind and well cherished invitation to represent my country in your highly esteemed organization. For that, I tell you;
I come to you from Egypt. A country with more than 7000 years of civilization, a country where the very first still frame was ever sculpted on the walls of its ancient temples, a country where the keys to the secret of the universe are believed to be hidden and safely kept.
A country where the Lumière Brothers chose to show their short film on 5 November 1896 in one of the halls of the Toussoun Bourse (the Café Zawani), less than a year after it was first shown to the world in Le Grand Café in Paris. I come to you from Egypt.
A country that is known to be the Hollywood of the Middle East yet the previous regime that ruled for around 30 years totally ignored the role of our cinema industry and its heritage, a great soft arms tool, which could have had a great impact on the evolution of the nation in all aspects and forms. So our cinema industry was marginalized and to a certain extent ignored.
Added to that neglect from the old regime, there also was the vast and fast development of technology in the media and entertainment field.
So as Egyptians who are concerned with our cinema industry we had to go into a dual sided war, from one side we had to fight to get the governments’ minimum and least possible support when other alternatives became no longer an option. And from the other side we had to fight to try and catch up with the technological development in order to overcome the obstacles that sometimes were embedded by the old regime itself!
Luckily, a revolution is now taking place in my country. That’s why I believe that now is the right time for me to come to you and introduce or rather remind you of Egyptian cinema which should become if not already a very important part of your interest in the cinema industry and to represent Egypt’s role in the process of solving the Piracy crises in the Global Cinema Industry.
And I’m also here to share a gentle blame for those who look after the cinema industry globally while marginalizing the importance of the Egyptian cinema. Big part of that I believe is due to the false cinema production evaluation criteria which is based on the number of films produced yearly rather than the quality of films produced. The heritage of the Egyptian cinema forces us as Egyptians working in the cinema field to focus more on the quality of films rather than the quantity which should not put Egypt out of global cinema awareness and existence considering the previously mentioned obstacles that we have to get through in order for the industry to survive.
Due to the fact that the Egyptian cinema was left out from all global considerations, I was under the impression that Egyptian cinema alone was suffering from the inability to combat piracy, only until recently when I started attending such assemblies I realized that this is a huge problem which most countries are still suffering from, each at their own scale but still we are all suffering from theft of our intellectual property.
So simply what I’m proposing and requesting now is that for us to fight such a spreading disease such as intellectual piracy, it requires a great deal of effort that can only be achieved when all forces on a worldwide scale are united under one umbrella to fight and stop this disease by any possible means. Such an umbrella should work as the FBI or the alike, i.e. it should have all the needed authorities to step in and prohibit any intellectual piracy in any country. This can be done by all countries signing a single treaty which gives this authority the right to do so and to be globally acknowledged.
I cease this opportunity to ask you all to re discover the new old Egypt, the ever young ancient Egypt. Egypt which gave you Omar el Sharif – Youssef Shahim – Dalida and many many others their glamour, fame, and success, Egypt the country which has many talents yet to be discovered.
Today I once again, ask you all, To be concerned with the piracy dilemma and to deeply consider enforcing the needed laws and methods to stop piracy.
Thank you all very much for your time, I hope I didn’t take much of it. Hopefully soon such an assembly can be held in the land of the pyramids. Thank you