FILM NIGHT: Marína of the Zabbaleen: Portrait of a Child Recycler
Sunday, March 21
Marína of the Zabbaleen, by Egyptian filmmaker Engi Wassef, is a documentary film that explores the world of seven-year-old Marína in the Muqqattam garbage recycling village in Cairo, Egypt. An impressionistic portrait of childhood and family, Marína also tells the story of the Zabbaleen, a Coptic Christian community of recyclers whose entrepreneurial waste management system produces one of the highest recycling rates in the world. As reported in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal, in the spring and fall of 2009, in reaction to the recent swine flu outbreak, the Egyptian government ordered the slaughter of all of the country’s pigs-the vast majority of which were raised by the Coptic Christian Zabbaleen and used integrally in the first phase of the recycling process. For almost a century, the Zabbaleen had raised pigs to consume the thousands of tons of organic waste generated daily by Cairo’s residents. The ramifications of the pig cull were far-reaching, devastating the livelihood of this minority community and imperiling Cairo’s entire system of waste management. (Cairo is the largest producer of waste on the African continent.) Yet the reasons for the pig cull were based at least as much on Egypt’s religious and political life as on scientific reasoning.
Marína premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, where artistic director Peter Scarlet called it one of his favorite films of the festival. The film went on to win a Muhr Award at the Dubai International Film Festival.
“Filled with glancing light and happy faces, Marina of the Zabbaleen – fights hard to sweeten the misery of its surroundings. Its success is due in no small part to Rob Hauer’s eloquent cinematography, which creeps inside the mind of a child. The film never loses its admiration for human resilience and childish imagination. Or for the tenacity of faith among those who seem most abandoned by their God.”
-The New York Times
“The principal strength of Wassef’s debut is its delicate, revealing look at Marina’s life. A portrait of the few who live off the rubbish of the affluent, Wassef’s Zabbaleen is richly observed and poignant.”
-Slant Magazine
www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=4498
www.tribecafilm.com/festival/news-views/Watch_Marina_of_the_Zabbaleen.html
www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/film-preview-marina-of-the-zabbaleen-a-young-girl-garbage-collector.php
www.tribecafilm.com/mailings/2569037.html
$8 – $12 admission. Doors open at 6:30 pm. Show at 7:00 pm.
