Fresh from Berlinale, where it screened as one of 20 short films in the Documentary + Experimental programme, International Dawn Chorus Day, the short, experimental documentary from John Greyson, award-winning filmmaker belonging to the Toronto New Wave and New Queer Cinema movements, will have its North American Premiere on April 29 in the Markers Short programme of the 2021 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. The short is written, directed and produced by Greyson with Shant Joshi of Fae Pictures serving as Impact Producer.
International Dawn Chorus Day was shot during the pandemic with 40 filmmakers from across the globe. The film uses a Zoom call visual to offer a bird song for Egyptian filmmaker Shady Habash and Egyptian queer activist, Sarah Hegazi, who lost their lives enduring the horrors of wrongful detention.
Shady Habash was known for his satiric anti-dictator music videos, and died in Cairo's notorious Tora prison, the day before the 36th annual International Dawn Chorus Day (May 3, 2020). Egyptian queer activist Sarah Hegazi, famously incarcerated for flying a rainbow flag at a Cairo concert, lived in Toronto as a refugee and took her own life a month after International Dawn Chorus Day.
Having experienced jail time in Cairo during the Arab Spring in 2013, John Greyson reminds audiences of the "lockdown" of the real struggles that so many Egyptian activists and artists continue to face in the detention and imprisonment systems in the Arab world. Most recently, Sanaa Seif (film editor and collaborator on Hot Doc' hit, The Square)
was sentenced to 18 months for the crime of trying to deliver a letter to her brother, likewise serving time in the same prison where Habash and Greyson were incarcerated.
States Greyson, "It's very meaningful to premiere IDCD here in Toronto where Sarah came as an LGBT refugee after prison in Egypt. I met her briefly, through our Rainbow Railroad support group, and at the Toronto Mashrou Leila concert. I was immensely moved by her story, and her unforgettable warmth and generosity, despite everything she'd endured. This film is a hope that the songs of Sarah, Shady, and Sanaa Seif and all the beautiful Egyptian birds can be heard."
"For me, these two stories combined to deliver a peculiar gut punch," Greyson continues. "Seven years earlier, I'd been locked up in that same prison, jailed in a roundup with hundreds of others in the aftermath of the Rabaa Square Massacre. As I learned more about Shady's life and work and death, and watched his videos, and read his final despairing letters that friends had smuggled out of prison, his words viscerally brought back memories of Tora. I remember staring at the dawn ceiling, watching the night shadows recede into the cool grey of morning, straining to hear the faint call of the dawn chorus. And now, Shady's words: "Prison doesn't kill, loneliness does.""
Shant Joshi adds, "Fae Pictures is exceptionally proud to be helming the impact campaign for International Dawn Chorus Day, a beautiful poetic film that speaks to our core values of celebrating LGBTQ+ activism and shining a light on the injustices taking place around the world, especially in Egypt, which many of us have forgotten about during the COVID-19 pandemic."
40 artists and filmmakers from six continents collaborated on the cinematography, waking up early on May 3, 2020 to shoot/record their respective dawn choruses on their cellphones. The 40 are, in alphabetical order: Anonymous (Imbaba, Cairo), Anonymous (New Cairo City), Anonymous (Tora, Cairo), Sofia Bohdanowicz (London), AA Bronson (Berlin), Julie Burleigh (LA), Shu Lea Cheang (Paris), Sheila Davis (Halifax), Richard Fung (Dades, Morocco), Rebecca Garrett (Toronto), Shohini Ghosh (Delhi), John Greyson (Toronto), Maureen Greyson (Coventry), Sharon Hayashi (LA), Dee Dee Halleck (Willow), Nelson Henricks (Montreal), April Hickox (Toronto), Michelle Jacques (Victoria), Nancy Kim (Seoul), Prabha Khosla (Burnaby), Lyne Lapointe (Mansonville), Stephen Lawson (Montreal), Jack Lewis (Vanwyksdorp), Catherine Lord (Hudson), Loring McAlpin (New York), Alexis Mitchell (Glasgow), Maki Mizukoshi (Tokyo), Ken Morrison (Cuernavaca), Daniel Negatu (Vancouver), Martha Newbigging (Consecon), Jane Park (Sydney), Pamela Rodgerson (Toronto), Su Rynard (Toronto), Lior Shamriz (Glendale), Amil Shivji (Dar Es Salaam), Cheryl Sourkes (Montreal), Dieylani Sow (Dakar), Richard Tillmann (Bayfield), Almerinda Travassos (Prince Edward County), David Wall (Toronto), BH Yael (Toronto). (Note: the Egyptians collaborators by necessity must be anonymous, given widespread reprisals against any Egyptians speaking out against the regime).
Editing by Kalil Haddad (Tiger Eats a Baby, Still Processing, Farm Boy, As I Sat in His Car) with sound by Everett Major (Tiger Eats a Baby, Farm Boy, As I Sat in His Car).
Vtape holds worldwide distribution rights.
Watch the trailer here:
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