At the Arab Cinema week festival hosted by Kuwait recently, the Egyptian actor and star of the film “the City” Basem Samrah, former critic and censor Ali Abu Shadi, and the director of the film “Thunderstorm,” Khaled Yousef have bitterly blasted the censorship imposed by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information on films.
The Egyptian guests accused the ministry of jeopardizing and deforming their films.
At a conference held after screening the film “the City” directed by Yusri Nasrallah, the film star accused the Kuwaiti censorship of “slaying” the film adding that it had distorted and weakened its drama structure. He described the censor who followed up the film as a butcher rather than a censor.
Abu Shadi accused the Kuwaiti censorship of “assassinating” the participating films. He said, “I worked for eight international festivals and have never seen anything like the Kuwaiti censorship”.
“What the Kuwaiti censorship has done to the unique Arab films participating in the Cinema Week has not at all been favorable to the occasion,” the critic complained, adding that the Kuwaiti authorities should have “either screened the films as presented or they should have rejected in principle.”
The attack by Samrah and Abu Shadi on the Kuwaiti censorship came one day after a similar attack was launched by the director of the film “Thunderstorm.”
Yousef accused the Kuwaiti censorship of deforming his film and removing some scenes without proper justification such as removing the “scene of burning the American flag.” – Albawaba.com
