Wednesday, 25 September is the opening ceremony of the Medrar 5^th Cairo Video Festival in Garden City, right in the middle of Cairo. The aim of the two-week event is to encourage communication between filmmakers, video-artists and curators.  Medrar also supplies a creative space in which new talents can showcase their work in a professional community, allowing them to obtain feedback and comments from their peers.

According to the press release: “The festival is Medrar’s first contribution to the art scene in 2005 and is the project through which Medrar was later established. It started as a collective of visual artists who were experimenting with a new medium and took initiative to establish themselves the space in which their works, along with works from all over the world, would be shown in the heart of this vigorous city.”

Over the period of ten days, Medrar will screen artistic videos in addition to experimental feature films that push boundaries. According to the website: “The selection was made from hundreds of received applications to highlight recent experiments in these fields. The screenings are followed by special sessions led by guest filmmakers and program curators to present their work and discuss it with the audience.”

The festival will start today at 7pm and end on 7 October, with video screenings starting every day until then at 4pm, followed by film screenings at 7pm.