I finally managed to watch “Bennesbeh Labokra Chou?” in cinema a couple of days ago and was so delighted to finally see the original acting instead of imagining the scenes in my head!
The work that M Media has done is definitely remarkable since the movie is actually made out of several amateur recordings of the play that were carefully reconstructed and arranged to make a relatively smooth movie. But as much as I enjoyed watching the whole thing, I couldn’t stop thinking the whole time that “Bennesbeh Labokra Chou?” is so perfect it deserved a way better video quality.
The videos are basically all grainy, out of focus at times and shaky at others. I don’t mean there was anything that could have been done better… Retaking a shot is absolutely not an option in our case and the producers were obliged to work with anything Ziad was providing. However, the end result was unfortunately a movie that I don’t feel like watching again unlike the audio plays that I never get bored of. Ziad El-Rahbani is probably the only one to blame for not taking the shooting seriously back then.
“Film Ameriki Tawil” will soon be also showing in cinemas, and I just hope it is recorded in a more professional way. Ziad’s play are timeless and deserve to be treated the same way some Egyptian classics like “Madraset Al Moushaghibin” and “El Wad Sayyed El Shaghal” are still being aired on TV sometimes.
Anyway, what I’ve wrote should never keep you from watching “Bennesbeh Labokra Chou?” on the big screen. And despite the bad quality of the video, I guarantee you will still enjoy finally seeing the original acting, especially the part where Joseph Sakr sings “3a Hadir El Bosta” with everyone around him dancing to it.