Egyptian Animation
Saturday, April 4th, 2009The first Egyptian animation studio was established by the Frenkel brothers in early 1935 and produced the first Egyptian and African Animation films under the title of the hero “Mish Mish” during the 1930s and 1940s, before the Frenkel brothers emigrated to France in 1951.
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| Ali Moheeb |
Some of the oldest studios were under supervision of artists like Ali Moheeb, Hasseb, and Abdel Aleem Zaki in the 1960s and 1970s. When Egyptian TV appeared in 1960s there was an animation department for producing titles of films and ads.
Some of the great artists worked in this department contributing to the revolution of animation in Egypt with short films, such as Noshi Iskander, Redha Goubran, Ahmed Saad and in another generation there was Shwekar Khalifa.
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| Bakkar by Mona Abou Alnasr 1990s |
In the late 1980s Mona Abu Alnasr established her own studio after she came back from studying animation in the USA, and started her own projects with cooperation with Egyptian TV. And she continued to make series for the TV for the coming years.
Right now in Egypt there are more than 50 animation studios which vary between big, medium and small size studios, there are round 10 big studios which provide more than 100 animated hours yearly, between series, episodes, ads and short films.
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| Mona Abou Alnasr |
“Al Sahar studio”, one of the biggest studios in Egypt, established by the Saudi investor in early 90s, started to work on the first Egyptian feature animated film “The Knight and the Princess” in 1998 and is not yet finished due to lack of funds.
Some of the studios really dominated the market, not only in Egypt, but also in Arab countries such as in Saudi Arabia and Emirates. Some of the studios monopolies the market of Egyptian TV completely and sometimes there is no way for small studios to enter the marketplace.
But for some small studios, there are some chances through cooperating with the larger studios on their own projects or by getting funds from other Arabian countries to make Arabian series or ads.
Therefore it could be considered that Egypt makes animation on behalf of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Libya, Yemen, and Kuwait …etc
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| The 5 Adventurers by Tarek Rashed |
The work primarily is 2d as well as clay animations in addition to new studios work with 3d and flash.
Some studios specialize in 3D like ”Tarek Rashed” which started in early 2000 making ads and then working on co-productions with Arabian countries in local series.
The studio ”Zamzam” specializes in Islamic series in clay animation. And with the same technique there are projects under the supervision of Eid Abdel Latif which recently got an award from CHINH, the Indian children’s festival.
There are medium sized studios which use the new techniques of flash like A+ Cartoon which uses and produces many works for the Egyptian TV.
In addition to the specialist studios, there are a lot of freelancers who work individually or part-time, or sometimes get their own projects such as Hussain Nemr, Hazem Gooda, Ahmed Fathi and Mohamed Ghazala who produce many awarded works.
According to the educational level of artists, there are a lot of projects for Egyptian TV and Arab states; the 1990s and 2000s could be considered as the golden age of Egyptian animation. Many new studios opened and many graduate students became involved after training in academies which provide animation classes like the Cinema Institute, Helwan University and Minia University where I teach.
Every year there is more than 200 new graduate students who studied animation for at least 2 years, and at least 100 of them continue in working in animation as a career.
In Egypt, there are only 2 international festivals that have animation categories in their competitions; Cairo International Cinema Festival for Children and Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentary and Short films. But there are also some local festivals such as Al Sakia Animation festival.
ASIFA Egypt
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| ASIFA Egypt logo |
In September 2008, the first chapter of its kind in Africa and the Arab world was approved by the international board of ASIFA (Association International du Film d’Animation). This became the connection between the international network of animators and the African and Arabian ones, and proved to be a powerful player in the animation field in the region by holding activities such as workshops, screenings, panels and festivals.
One of the first activities of ASIFA Egypt is celebrating IAD (The International Animation Day) which is held yearly on 28th of October, commemorating the first public performance of animation in 1892. The first Egyptian celebration of this event was held in Alexandria with collaboration with the Al Rasheed foundation for cultural development on 28th October 2008.
The coming plans of ASIFA Egypt is to promote the art of animation, not only in Egypt, but also in the whole region by promoting networking activities and participating in international events.
