Cairo: Capping a week of protest against screening an Israeli film at a French festival in Cairo, a group of Egyptian filmmakers have said they will organise a concurrent protest festival starting on Sunday.
Last week, 11 Egyptian filmmakers withdrew from Recontres de L'Image a week-long festival organised by the French Cultural Centre in Cairo in protest against showing a film by an Israeli director.
In their protest festival called The First Festival for Free Image, which runs until April 15, the Egyptian filmmakers will show 40 feature, short and documentary films, say organisers.
The festival was approved by Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni.
"The Egyptian artists have the right to show their films without pressure from anybody or imposing any conditions on them," added Hosni, who last October lost in a race for the top post of the UN's cultural agency the Unesco.
On Thursday, scores of Egyptian artists and intellectuals protested outside the French Cultural Centre in Cairo against what they called the insistence on showing Almost Normal, a film by Israeli director Karen Ben-Rafael.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. But anti-Israel feelings run high in this country where many people among the intellectuals continue to consider Israel an enemy.
About two months ago, the Egyptian Press Syndicate, warned an editor of a state-run monthly magazine for meeting the Israeli ambassador in Cairo in violation of a ban imposed by the independent union, against contacts with Israelis.
