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Graduating Class of Film Students Named 'Samir Seif Class' at Jesuit Cairo

Graduating Class of Film Students Named 'Samir Seif Class' at Jesuit Cairo
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Graduating Class of Film Students Named 'Samir Seif Class' at Jesuit Cairo

Graduating Class of Film Students Named 'Samir Seif Class' at Jesuit Cairo

With a flood of love, the name of the late Egyptian director, Samir Seif, echoed through the walls of the Scientific and Cultural Renaissance Association (Jesuit Cairo) during the graduation ceremony of the 11th batch of the association's Film School, after choosing the name of the late director of this year’s graduates, “Samir Seif graduating class.” The Film School, located in the Faggala neighborhood in the center of the Egyptian capital, is one of the most prestigious institutions founded by the Al-Nahda Association (Cairo Jesuit).

The film school offers full scholarships to accepted students, and it provides them with the opportunity to learn filmmaking and film production using alternative methods. The school was established in 2005 as one of the components of the project "Supporting freedom of artistic expression" in Cairo and Upper Egypt. In addition to the Film School, the Jesuit Association also has established a number of programs aimed at film education. Including the establishment of the Documentary Film School in Upper Egypt, and Stories of the South workshops, which provide a set of workshops on film-making in the south.

The school takes a holistic approach to filmmaking, so that trainees can become well versed in all fields and stages of filmmaking. The program consists of lectures, training, activities and group discussions with filmmakers and specialists in various artistic and intellectual fields, in addition to a set of practical workshops in the fields of cinematography, scenario writing, photography, sound, editing, production, distribution, and directing.

According to Dr. Marwa Abdullah Al-Sayed, director of the Jesuit Film School, this year’s graduating class was named after the late Samir Seif in honor of the role he played teaching this class’s students the fundamentals of filmmaking in the months leading up to his sudden death. Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, she says, “As soon as we contacted him, he expressed readiness to support the film school, despite his great commitments and preoccupations during that period, and he believed in supporting the film school and its students. So, we named this year’s graduating class after him, in an attempt to express our gratitude and our recognition of his generosity to students, noting that this is the first time in the history of the film school that a class of graduates is named after a filmmaker."

Samir Seif died in December of last year, at the age of 72, and many of his movies are considered milestones in the history of Egyptian cinema; including The suspect, A stranger in my house, Pleasure market and His Excellency the Minister. In addition to directing, the late director was also taught at several universities.

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Why Greenland? Remote but Resource-Rich Island Occupies a Key Position in a Warming World

Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
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Why Greenland? Remote but Resource-Rich Island Occupies a Key Position in a Warming World

Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)

Remote, icy and mostly pristine, Greenland plays an outsized role in the daily weather experienced by billions of people and in the climate changes taking shape all over the planet.

Greenland is where climate change, scarce resources, tense geopolitics and new trade patterns all intersect, said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko.

The world's largest island is now "central to the geopolitical, geoeconomic competition in many ways," partly because of climate change, Dabelko said.

Since his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime US ally and a founding member of NATO. It is also home to a large US military base.

Why is Greenland coveted? Think of Greenland as an open refrigerator door or thermostat for a warming world, and it's in a region that is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, said New York University climate scientist David Holland.

Locked inside are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is becoming less so.

Many of the same minerals are currently being supplied mostly by China, so other countries such as the United States are interested, Dabelko said. Three years ago, the Denmark government suspended oil development offshore from the territory of 57,000 people.

But more than the oil, gas or minerals, there's ice — a "ridiculous" amount, said climate scientist Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine.

If that ice melts, it would reshape coastlines across the globe and potentially shift weather patterns in such a dramatic manner that the threat was the basis of a Hollywood disaster movie. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melts, the world's seas would rise by 24 feet (7.4 meters). Nearly a foot of that is so-called zombie ice, already doomed to melt no matter what happens, a 2022 study found.

Since 1992, Greenland has lost about 182 billion tons (169 billion metric tons) of ice each year, with losses hitting 489 billion tons a year (444 billion metric tons) in 2019.

Greenland will be "a key focus point" through the 21st century because of the effect its melting ice sheet will have on sea levels, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "It will likely become a bigger contributor in the future."

That impact is "perhaps unstoppable," NYU's Holland said.

Are other climate factors at play? Greenland also serves as the engine and on/off switch for a key ocean current that influences Earth's climate in many ways, including hurricane and winter storm activity. It's called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, and it's slowing down because more fresh water is being dumped into the ocean by melting ice in Greenland, Serreze said.

A shutdown of the AMOC conveyor belt is a much-feared climate tipping point that could plunge Europe and parts of North America into prolonged freezes, a scenario depicted in the 2004 movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

"If this global current system were to slow substantially or even collapse altogether — as we know it has done in the past — normal temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe would change drastically," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. "Agriculture would be derailed, ecosystems would crash, and ‘normal’ weather would be a thing of the past."

Greenland is also changing color as it melts from the white of ice, which reflects sunlight, heat and energy away from the planet, to the blue and green of the ocean and land, which absorb much more energy, Holland said.

Greenland plays a role in the dramatic freeze that two-thirds of the United States is currently experiencing. And back in 2012, weather patterns over Greenland helped steer Superstorm Sandy into New York and New Jersey, according to winter weather expert Judah Cohen of the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research.

Because of Greenland's mountains of ice, it also changes patterns in the jet stream, which brings storms across the globe and dictates daily weather. Often, especially in winter, a blocking system of high pressure off Greenland causes Arctic air to plunge to the west and east, smacking North America and Europe, Cohen said.

Why is Greenland's location so important? Because it straddles the Arctic circle between the United States, Russia and Europe, Greenland is a geopolitical prize that the US and others have eyed for more than 150 years. It's even more valuable as the Arctic opens up more to shipping and trade.

None of that takes into consideration the unique look of the ice-covered island that has some of the Earth's oldest rocks.

"I see it as insanely beautiful. It's eye-watering to be there," said Holland, who has conducted research on the ice more than 30 times since 2007. "Pieces of ice the size of the Empire State Building are just crumbling off cliffs and crashing into the ocean. And also, the beautiful wildlife, all the seals and the killer whales. It’s just breathtaking."