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Following up a highly eventful year, the diverse artist delivers an electrifying track for the official soundtrack of the 2022 World Cup which he will perform at the final match.
Ahead of his performance at the FIFA 2022 World Cup finals taking place in Qatar on Sunday the 18th of December, Wegz releases ‘Ezz El Arab’ as part of the tournament’s official soundtrack.
Internationally acclaimed Egyptian artist Wegz has been continuously growing throughout his career. In only a few years, the Alexandrian rapper and singer has managed to permeate the cultural zeitgeist, becoming an ever-present figure in contemporary Arabic music.
This year, Wegz has achieved major accomplishments, such as his track ‘Al Bakht’ amassing over 150 million views on YouTube and topping the charts on Spotify’s most played artist in the MENA region.
If there is one thing that Wegz has demonstrated throughout his career, it’s that he is always moving forward, continuously trying to evolve his sound and expand his reach.
In pursuit of these ventures, the beloved Egyptian rap icon has just released an official track for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, looking to afro-beats, electronic music, and his signature singing style to deliver an energising track that explores themes of unity and pride.
The music video for the track was directed by Ali El Arabi, who also directed Wegz’s, ‘B3oda Ya Belady’ from the highly acclaimed documentary ‘Captains of Zaatari’. The video features Wegz in a variety of shots around Qatar, DJing to an adoring crowd of football fans, and performing to camera in a cinematic portrayal of the tournament’s festivities.
This year’s World Cup has been more than just a sporting event for people of the MENA region. The tournament has always been a time for gathering and community, even if many Arab national teams have not reached their full potential in previous iterations of the World Cup. But this year’s tournament, hosted in Qatar, has seen incredible performances from teams such as Saudi Arabia, and of course, the Moroccan national team, who have instilled a sense of pride in Arab fans around the region and beyond. Watch the full music video here
With a Lebanese name and a Cairo birthplace in the background, Gabriel Makhlouf is steering Ireland’s financial recovery.
As governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Gabriel Makhlouf is much preoccupied by the issue of resilience in a small, open economy challenged by a year of pandemic.
Mr Makhlouf’s own peripatetic life has shown him how precious an asset the quality of adaptability is at a time of change, be it in a person or for a national economic system.
Upheaval and the Makhloufs on the move could be a theme stretching back to when his father’s side of the family travelled across the Mediterranean from their Lebanese homeland to Cyprus.
When the island was part of the Empire, the family became British subjects and Makhlouf Snr ended up working at the embassy in Cairo after the Second World War.
It was in that palatial building near the Nile that he fell for a Greek-Armenian woman whose forebears had fled the historical turmoil of Izmir in 1922. Her family moved to Athens where she has come full circle to live today.
Mr Makhlouf was talking to The National at a time when Ireland’s strict national Level 5 lockdown is both defining his job and providing a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him to where he is now.
At a conference last week, the governor spoke of how the outlook had deteriorated in 2021 with the renewed lockdown. The short-term need to bolster the economy coincided with structural changes from technological innovation and climate policies. Ireland suffered a 7.1 per cent slump in domestic demand last year but is expected to see a 2.9 per cent increase in 2021.
Unemployment is predicted to reach 9.3 per cent this year and for an economy with a high level of property-focused debt, ensuring that households are supported is a priority. Mr Makhlouf points out that growth is not the same as having the capacity to recover quickly.
“We cannot anticipate every type of shock but we can build resilience,” he said in his keynote address. “Resilience is what has prevented the financial system repeating its previous failure. Resilience is what has protected households, businesses and communities against the worst of the damage from the shock of the pandemic.
“Economic resilience is what helps communities to manage the disruption caused by change and to manage the economic transitions we are living in right now.”
In providing leadership during financial strife, it is perhaps a boon to have some sense of dislocation. He describes his mother’s family as refugees. His parents met in a milieu that was the product of worlds with roots as far back as the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. And yet the people of Mr Makhlouf’s parents’ generation made their choices and moved to build new lives.
“My mother, who was born in Athens, had spent most of her life outside of Greece, but when my dad retired she came back,” he recalls. “My dad moved on and lived all over the world and settled in Greece at the end, before he passed away.”
Mr Makhlouf was born in Egypt but left at the age of three when his father joined the United Nations and moved to the Congo. Makhlouf pere’s time as an international diplomat exposed the young Gabriel to many cultures.
“My first language was French, because my parents’ mutual tongue was French,” he says. “So I learned English when I was about seven when we went to Bangladesh, and when we got to the Pacific we lived in Samoa.
“I went to school in Samoa. My parents then decided they ought to send me to boarding school if I was going to get a proper education and not one that changed every few years.”
Travelling during the school holidays from the school in England was a regular odyssey in itself. “The trip to get to Samoa and back to England involved stopping in Los Angeles, Honolulu and Pago Pago, an American territory pronounced ‘Pango Pango’,” he recalls.
“But then they moved to the Philippines, they moved to Fiji, they were in Ethiopia and they were in Thailand. So, you know, my brother and I got used to this life.”
It is a puzzle, then, to establish the appeal to the young Mr Makhlouf of embarking on a career as a Whitehall civil servant. He explains it as following his father’s footsteps in to the bureaucracy. Certainly, the career path was more about determination and making opportunities than wanderlust.
“I don’t think I joined the civil service for stability, to be honest, but maybe somewhere deep inside me there might have been that,” he says. “I joined the civil service really for interest. I joined as a tax inspector at the beginning. And it was an interesting career option – it involved law, it involved accountancy and it gave early opportunity to manage.”
Fate intervened to resume the family’s roving tradition when Mr Makhlouf was headhunted in 2010 to run New Zealand’s finance ministry, the Treasury. There, he was responsible for developing a measure of well-being as a replacement for the traditional gross domestic product yardstick.
In one memorable allusion in a speech he compared the role of an economist to that of an artisan, challenged with weaving together different strands of evidence into a structured framework.
Before upping sticks to the southern hemisphere, Mr Makhlouf at one point worked directly with then-UK chancellor Gordon Brown, who became prime minister at the time of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Asked about his former boss and a recent warning that the world now faces another lost decade or perhaps even worse than after that crash, Mr Makhlouf acknowledges how bad it was last time around but disagreed on the dangers now.
“I think that there is one massive difference between the crisis in 2008 and today’s crisis,” he says. “Which is that the crisis in 2008 was a crisis of the financial system, the financial system basically collapsed.
“Today, the financial system is still standing, and it’s the financial system that’s playing a very important role in supporting businesses and households through the pandemic and hopefully into a recovery and out the other end.”
World leaders are proving to be different kinds of players, having recognised that this is an economic crisis caused by a health crisis. “Governments throughout the world have chosen to close down economies for the sake of people’s health. In some respects that is been planned. In comparison to what happened in 2008 where actually events completely overwhelmed us.”
So Mr Brown’s fears are too pessimistic? “A lot of the changes and challenges that are ahead of us, I think if we manage them, then I think they can be managed well,” he says.
Mr Makhlouf takes heart from the rapid adjustment of businesses to home-working and new patterns of demand. “Economies across the world and certainly in the industrialised world have adapted to the restrictions,” he says. “More businesses are set up for that and more consumers were ready and knew how to proceed.”
The scale of “technological adaptation” since he accepted the Irish job in 2019 is something he could well have guessed was just around the corner.
The governor has not been immune to the extraordinary pressures imposed by lockdowns. Even at the outset of the pandemic, the family’s far-flung ways isolated him in Athens just as the 2,000-strong staff of the central bank in Dublin were forced to work from home.
With his mother ill in hospital, Mr Makhlouf was on hand to help her recover. “Effectively, I carried on working like everyone else via laptops and iPads. It’s quite an extraordinary thing that we all seem to have got used to.”
History means that a British citizen running the Irish central bank will always be a talking point. The moment that the UK left the EU put Mr Makhlouf in an invidious spot.
First, there is migration of businesses and banking activity from the City of London to Dublin so that firms remain within the EU umbrella. Is this an opportunity?
“Overall, I think the impact of Brexit is negative. It’s negative for Ireland and for the UK and for the EU,” he says. “We’re most exposed as a country in the agricultural sector, in particular. The fact that there was, at the end of the day, a deal albeit a very slim deal was better than there being no deal.
“On financial services, we have seen post-referendum a move of business from London to Dublin,” he agrees. “I’m not sure I would necessarily call it an opportunity at all. I think from my perspective as a regulator this increases the need for us to manage and ensure the financial system works properly.”
With his son, brother and wife’s relatives living in London, the governor observes that the pandemic has played a greater role than Brexit in cutting off families and friends. But things are different.
“I feel sorry for someone like my son — his opportunities to work in 27 other countries have now been limited. So his generation has lost out,” he says. “Ireland and Irish people have got many connections in the UK, we recognise Brexit has happened but those connections haven’t disappeared, they haven’t been lost.”
As two movie-perfect countries on the periphery of continents with roughly similar populations, one wonders what the biggest change is for Mr Makhlouf in switching from New Zealand to Ireland.
There is the remoteness of the former compared with the latter’s position within the wealthy European market. But the answer, he feels, is the perspective on China. In New Zealand, much time was spent thinking about and visiting that part of east Asia. He himself went at least nine times.
“The role that Asia has been playing and will play in the 21st century usually dominated a lot of thinking. And what’s interesting coming back to Europe, and perhaps now it’s not surprising at one level, but it was noticeable how little of our time was spent thinking about Asia.”
For the well-travelled, there is the unchanging truth that proximity is often the most powerful force in geography.
The lockdown both defines Gabriel Makhlouf’s job as Governor of the Irish central bank and provides a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him where he is today. Courtesy Central Bank of Ireland
“Festivities and celebrations affiliated with the Journey of the Holy Family in Egypt are now on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity,” professor Nahla Imam, heritage consultant at the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and country representative of Egypt at the 2003 Convention of Safeguarding the Intangible Heritage of UNESCO, told Ahram Online on Wednesday.
Imam credited the move to the efforts of the Egyptian ministries of culture and foreign affairs, adding that Egypt’s efforts were almost unanimously supported by UNESCO’s Inter-Governmental Committee.
This is the seventh intangible cultural heritage element that Egypt enlists in UNESCO. Prior to the Journey of the Holy Family, the Egyptian manual-textile industry in Upper Egypt was put on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage Sites in Need of Urgent Preservation.
Egypt first enlisted El-Sirah El-Helalya (The Epic of Beni Helal) in 2008, Tahteeb(Stick Art) in 2016, the Aragouz Puppet in 2018, and the knowledge and traditions affiliated with palm trees in 2019.
According to the accounts of historians, the Holy Family spent around four years in Egypt.
Their trip started in the Sinai at Al-Farma, on the border with Gaza, where they arrived after fleeing Jerusalem. Their trip ended in Durnaka, Assiut, venue of the famous Monastery where the feast of Virgin Mary is celebrated in August each year.
As the FIFA World Cup reaches its climactic end, one cannot help but reflect on what an extraordinary political event it has been. Those who argue that sport and politics should be decoupled will have found it hard watching politics as an ever-present from the day Qatar was awarded the event back in 2010 and at every single match since the tournament began on Nov. 20.
But perhaps one of the most fascinating and hopefully impactful thrills at the World Cup has been the rare opportunity to remind the world that, for all its troubles, fissures and rivalries, the peoples of the Arab world do have much in common and that football has highlighted that reality every day in Qatar.
Some might question these signs of togetherness among fellow Arabs. Yet there were copious examples where it shone. Three achievements stood out.
Firstly, for Morocco to beat Spain and then Portugal in the knockout rounds was exceptional, especially following their defeat of Belgium, the second-ranked side in the world, in the group stage. There was more than an element of delight in seeing a former colony defeating, in Spain, its one-time colonial master. Morocco will get the chance to overcome its other colonial power, France, in the semifinals on Wednesday. In fact, star player Achraf Hakimi was born in the poor suburbs of Madrid. Morocco were the only team in the quarterfinals not from Europe or South America. Few in the region were not cheering them on. A sense of collective pride emerged as a result of the North African country’s success in becoming the first Arab and African state to reach the semifinals.
One might have thought that, given the dire state of relations between Morocco and Algeria, that Algerians would have shied away from joining in the festivities. Evidence suggests otherwise. Algerians were out supporting Morocco as enthusiastically as anyone else in the region. A friend was in Paris and told me: “After one of the Morocco victories, there were lots of Algerian supporters and flags joining their Moroccan brothers and sisters in celebration.” The Algerian captain and superstar Riyad Mahrez was quick to praise the Atlas Lions’ achievements.
Secondly, Tunisia beating reigning world champions France in the group stage was also an unforgettable moment. This was the first time they had beaten European opposition in the World Cup. This was every bit as big a win as in 1982, when Algeria beat the mighty West Germany in their first ever World Cup game.
Third, the Saudi victory over Argentina was another huge milestone. In many ways, this ignited the World Cup for the Arab world.
A sense of pride has also broken out that many of the finest players in the world come from this region. Hakim Ziyech for Morocco is one. Mahrez and Mohammed Salah were not in Doha but are still at the top of the sport. Kylian Mbappe, a star of this tournament, has an Algerian mother.
The key players in the Arab teams largely play in Europe. This shows football at its best in terms of breaking down barriers. Fourteen out of the 26-man Morocco squad were born outside of the country, showing how the team relies on the Moroccan diaspora. This includes Ziyech, who opted not to play for the Netherlands. That points to one challenge that countries like Morocco face, as they lack the footballing infrastructure to develop and nurture enough talent at home.
This World Cup has also often been about one country that is not there. At every single game featuring an Arab side, and plenty others beside, the Palestinian flag was there. It is a political symbol and a defiant message that the Arabs will not forget or ignore what is happening to the Palestinians in the diaspora and under occupation. As an even more brutally right-wing coalition is about to take power in Israel, this message should be carefully noted in the US and European capitals. Palestine still matters.
Israeli hasbaristas were also caught out. Having belittled and mocked those who claimed otherwise, they discovered that, despite the normalization deals, Arabs are not willing to gloss over Israel’s crimes and oppression. Time and time again, Israeli journalists, while trying to pretend everything was all lovely and wonderful with their newfound Arab friends, found that “free Palestine” was pushed back in their faces. Many locals snubbed their requests for interviews.
” A World Cup in the Arab world has brought some cheer to a region that has been hit hard by wars and other crises. “
Chris Doyle
Palestinian armbands and keffiyehs were being worn at nearly every match by huge numbers of fans. The sheer arrogance of believing that a state could oppress millions of people and that all would be peace and happiness was exposed as the nonsense it is. The Moroccan players had no hesitation in raising the Palestinian flag after their wins over Spain and Portugal.
Many Arabs also expressed admiration for the courage of the Iranian team after the players refused to sing their national anthem ahead of their opening match against England. This points to the widespread sympathy many Arabs feel toward Iranians, notably currently the women, who are struggling for their freedoms.
The Western media has been quick to point out all that was wrong with this World Cup. It is about time it also highlighted what has gone right. For all the criticisms of Qatar in the run-up to the cup over issues such as workers’ rights, one of the key elements of its bid has been fulfilled. Football in the region has been the winner. The atmosphere has been considerably warmer than many expected, with largely good-natured relations among fans of all countries. It seems that rival fans have not needed to be segregated, showing the festival-like atmosphere. Fan violence does not seem to have featured. The largest numbers of fans, of course, came from the Arab world, with Saudi Arabia providing the largest number from a single country.
Many outside the region were dismissive of the claims that football mattered in the Middle East. One leading commentator contemptuously told me, while on the BBC, that Qatar did not have a footballing heritage. Yet the region should never have been ignored. A World Cup in the Arab world has brought some cheer to a region that has been hit hard by wars and other crises, and whose peoples have not had much to celebrate in recent years.
Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, in London. Twitter: @Doylech
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News’ point of view
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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Palestinians watch the World Cup quarterfinal between Morocco and Portugal in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022. (AP Photo)
Syrian young artist, Lama Zakaria has recently achieved the first world record in the Guinness World Records for the largest display of mandala in the world, raising the name of Syria high and proving once again the ability of Syrian youth to excel in various scientific and artistic fields.
Lama told SANA’s reporter that she spent two years of continuous and diligent effort for reaching this stage, stressing that she worked with precision and patience to achieve the required symmetry in her painting, which achieved the record for the largest painting of mandala in the world.
She added that the mandala contains 4096 mandala circles of various diameters, colors and various decorations by using special dotting tools and acrylic paints on a 6 mm-thick wooden board.
She pointed out that the painting with dimensions 488 x 488 cm contains a large number of circles overlapping with each other and free circles with flowing lines that enhance cohesion among them.
Zakaria noted that in each quarter of the painting forms a part of a major basic circle that is the center of the painting and its eye-attracting heart, which required work carefully on all colors and various decorative units.
Lama Zakaria, a third-year student at the Faculty of Architecture at al-Baath University, has sought to specialize in mandalas, as she worked individually to learn the origins of this art and master its methods, and participated in several art exhibitions.
source/content: sana.sy (headline edited)
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Actress Lama Zakaria – Photo from Lama’s official Instagram page
The artist’s latest exhibition of 50 works is the culmination of a lifetime spent studying ancient script.
One day in 1984, in Basra, Iraq, an art teacher taught his students calligraphy. He drew four letters on the blackboard in Ruqʿah script, a plain style often used for signage.
As the teacher drew the letters alif, bah, jim, dal, Wissam Shawkat, then aged 10, watched absolutely entranced.
“Seeing that Arabic letters can take that form was fascinating for me,” Shawkat tells The National at the Mestaria Gallery in Alserkal Avenue — where his latest calligraphy exhibition, Letters of Love II, is running until November 30. “I was really intrigued by this.”
Today, Shawkat is an international leading authority on calligraphy, a self-taught master who pioneered his own technique known as “calligraforms.”
On the eve of his solo exhibition, Shawkat is surrounded by 50 original artworks all centred on the theme of love. He stands in the middle, surrounded by a landscape of letters, composed and morphed by a myriad styles that push the boundaries of traditional calligraphy practices. The result is a delicate balance of ancient forms and modern sensibilities.
“Letters by themselves are like an abstract shape,” he says.
“If you take any letter in Arabic or in English, any part of that letter, you will end up with an abstraction. We give it sound or when it’s merged with another letter, we give it meaning. But in reality, it’s a form, a beautiful form.”
As a teenager, due to the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the Gulf War, Shawkat’s resources were limited. Despite this stark reality, the artist took what summer courses were available, worked in sign-making shops and practised with different mediums and brushes. He drew comics, decorated skateboards, created sketches for friends, and took any chance available to practice mark-making and the art of calligraphy.
“If you spend years writing and perfecting this form, it’s definitely something you’ll fall in love with,” Shawkat says.
“After all these years, I arrived at this point where I love the abstract form of the letters and I think that’s why I’m still making it.”
Letters of Love II was launched on November 11, a significant date for Shawkat. Not only did he leave Iraq on the same date in 2002, but 11 years ago, his solo exhibition, Letters of Love, took place in New York to major critical success.
Shawkat’s new exhibition is an extension of the technical ideas he first experimented with in the New York show, an homage to his personal milestones and, of course, a celebration of love.
“For me, love is a universal concept,” Shawkat says.
“Plus, I wanted to take calligraphy away from always being associated with religion. Historians from the West call it Islamic calligraphy, but it’s not true. The art of calligraphy is about the language, it’s not the religion.”
Shawkat took the Arabic word for love, “hub”, and some of its variations such as “mahaba”, meaning to have love for something, “‘ishq”, to long for something, and “gharam”, meaning desire, and reconstructed them — experimenting with the inner and outer forms of the letters and the composition of the words; blocking parts of their shape, opening up others; extending and bending; changing their silhouettes.
The range of forms and shapes he created within each frame are meticulously composed. They exist in relation to the frames and the spaces they occupy, possessing a uniquely stylised sense of harmony fuelled by Shawkat’s departure from the traditional “rules” of calligraphy.
Even the notion of freedom is expressed uniquely within the works. Free of the cliche of words bursting out of their frame or paint spilling out on to the physical space, freedom is organic and planned in Shawkat’s work. It teases and pushes the idea of Arabic letter forms and calligraphy into new spaces.
“I want to show something aesthetically beautiful,” Shawkat says. “When I’m sketching or putting together the work, everything I do is first in black and white. Colour comes as a second thing, I work with it later.”
It’s this focus on form and composition that gives the varied works an overall sense of grounded weight, rooted and connected to each other through a slow gravitational force, as opposed to an intertwined sense of drama.
Shawkat achieves this thorough planning, like an architect of words, an engineer of letters.
“When I started planning for this show, I went back and opened my old files from the New York show,” Shawkat says.
“I found some ideas that were interesting but weren’t refined yet. I took some of them and made them work, and now they are pieces in this show. It’s always a process, it’s progress. Sometimes it fails and sometimes it works.”
Shawkat’s work reveals not only an artist who has a significant understanding of the forms and symbolism of letters and language, but one with technical knowledge and prowess.
All the paper in the show is handmade, the ink made from personalised pigment colours. Each piece is a juxtaposition of these traditional materials with Shawkat’s forward-thinking experimentation in calligraphy.
It’s also these part-conscious, part-instinctive decisions that make Shawkat’s work timeless and appealing to an international audience, many of whom don’t speak or can’t read Arabic.
“I think people who don’t know Arabic fall in love with calligraphy for the same reason I first did in class,” Shawkat says.
“It’s because they enjoy the form. They look at them as beautiful abstract shapes. As simple as that.”
Letters of Love II will be on show at the Mestaria Gallery in Alserkal Avenue
Wissam Shawkat’s solo exhibition Letters of Love II is on show at Mestaria Gallery in Alserkal Avenue until November 30. All Photos: Antonie Robertson/The National
Ahead of the Chinese President’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Ministry of Media and the China Media Group announced the launch of a joint partnership initiative to promote relations between Arab countries and China through media in a ceremony in Riyadh on Monday.
“It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Arab-Chinese Media Cooperation Forum, which is being held today in Riyadh…between the Saudi Ministry of Media and the China Media Group,” Acting Minister of Media Majid Al-Qasabi said.
Al-Qasabi addressed the audience in a speech via video extending his support for the cooperation.
“We look forward to the cooperation today to launch new media initiatives that contribute to deepening the ties between the Arab and Chinese cultures and between their peoples,” he said.
The initiative, he explained, will promote the presence of Chinese media on Arab channels, translating Chinese television shows into Arabic.
Through the initiative, Saudi and Chinese television will also work together to create programs highlighting the stories of individuals from both Saudi Arabia and China who achieved success in each other’s countries.
The initiative will also create opportunities for travel between the two countries, opening a space for greater understanding and strengthening the relationship between China and Saudi Arabia through media and cultural exchange.
In line with the aim of improving communication, the ceremony was held in both Arabic and Chinese in the presence of Ambassador of China to Saudi Arabia Chen Weiqing, Director-General of the Arab States Broadcasting Union Abdulraheem Sulaiman, and Chinese politician Li Shulei, head of publicity at the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
Mohammed Fahad Al-Harthi, president of the Arab States Broadcasting Union and CEO of the Saudi Broadcasting Authority, presented the initiative in a speech during the ceremony.
“Saudi-Chinese relations are old and well-established and strong, and they are witnessing prosperity and expansion,” he said, citing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to China, the over 20,000 Arab students studying in China and the several schools in Saudi Arabia that teach the Chinese language and culture.
“We hope that this relationship will witness greater growth with the connection of interests and relations between the two peoples,” he added.
Toward the end of the ceremony, top media representatives from Palestine, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Iraq extended their support for the initiative.
Al-Harthi stressed the importance of media in any country’s diplomatic relations.
“To achieve a solid relationship between the two societies, the media must play this role,” Al-Harthi said.
Through the initiative, translated Chinese works will be broadcast in Palestine, Algeria, Jordan, Sudan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
The American Music Awards played host to a glittering showcase of Arab fashion this week as the likes of Carrie Underwood, Kelly Rowland, Becky G and Lauren Jauregui showed off gowns from Middle Eastern designers.
Country singer Underwood opted for a multi-hued dress by Lebanese Italian designer Tony Ward. With a plunging scooped neckline and playful fringed beading, the gown hailed from the designer’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection.
US singer and actress Rowland took things in a wilder direction with a leopard print sculptural gown by Lebanon’s Nicolas Jebran. The Rowland added black latex gloves for a dose of drama.
Meanwhile, US singer Becky G showed off an asymmetrical mini dress by Bahraini label Monsoori with a larger-than-life train and voluminous material draped on one shoulder.
For her part, US singer Lauren Jauregui, a member of Fifth Harmony, flaunted a floor-length number by designer Norma Kamali, who is partly of Lebanese descent. The heavily embroidered gown hailed from the designers Resort 2023 collection and featured tulip sleeves and a flared skirt.
Superstar singer and songwriter Taylor Swift won all six trophies she was contending for at Sunday night’s awards ceremony, including the artist of the year prize.
The new American Music Awards accolades lifted Swift’s lifetime total to 40, breaking her own record for most wins at the world’s largest fan-voted awards ceremony, Reuters reported.
The “Anti-Hero” singer said fan support in recent years had encouraged her to write more music, which made her happier.
“I have the fans to thank essentially for my happiness,” Swift said to a cheering crowd at the ceremony in Los Angeles.
Other honors for Swift on Sunday included favorite pop album, country album and video for her re-recording of 2012 record “Red.” The singer has been remaking albums from her past because of a dispute with her former record label.
For artist of the year, Swift triumphed over formidable names including Beyonce, Harry Styles, The Weeknd, Drake, Adele and Bad Bunny, who had gone into the night with a leading eight nominations.
Pop singer Pink opened the AMAs show dancing and singing on roller skates to her upbeat song “Never Gonna Not Dance Again.” Later in the ceremony, she performed “Hopelessly Devoted to You” in a tribute to Olivia Newton-John, the “Grease” singer who died in August.
Musician Lionel Richie, known for “All Night Long” and other 1980s hits, was celebrated with the AMA’s icon award. Stevie Wonder and Charlie Puth performed a medley of Richie songs on dueling pianos.
It has been another big week for Arab designers, with a number of celebrities opting for Middle Eastern looks for the 2022 Governors Awards in Los Angeles.
Actress Jessica Chastain showed off a red hot Zuhair Murad look, while Elizabeth banks chose a sleek gown by Elie Saab.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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Kelly Rowland wore a leopard print sculptural gown by Lebanon’s Nicolas Jebran. (AFP)
Tunisia’s prestigious industry event enjoys another successful year, helping spread a love of culture across the country.
Another week of movie magic, street art and music has come to an end following the 33rd edition of the International Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia.
Titled “Hel Thneya”, which means “Open the Path” in Tunisian dialect, the festival once again cemented its status as a major cultural attraction for visitors of all ages, who flocked to cinemas and filled the streets en masse.
The festival, one of the eldest and most prestigious in the Mena region, ended on Sunday.
As is tradition, the capital Tuniswas transformed into an open celebration of not only cinema but all forms of arts, with independent young painters getting the chance to show their artworks to the public for the first time and musicians performing every evening to audiences in the middle of Avenue Habib Bourguiba. For many, it was an opportunity to watch films that they don’t usually have the means or the opportunity to see.
Speaking outside the Theatre de Region Cinema, Downtown Tunis, Amina told The National she had been waiting for the festival to introduce her two children to the world of the cinema.
“As a family, we always discuss films together but we never find the time nor age-appropriate films to watch. This is a great opportunity to let them discover the big screen,” Amina said.
Amina’s daughter Ritej, who is in the sixth grade, was grinning with happiness as she prepared to enter the cinema hall. “I’m excited, I’m sure I’m going to enjoy this and tell my friends about it,” Ritej said.
Amina said that she often encourages her children to value the arts, with Ritej currently rehearsing for a school play, and she wishes there were more events like it in Tunisia.
This year’s International festival was an opportunity to revive the city. According to organisers, the festival aimed to showcase both new cinema productions and also timeless films that the younger generations needed to be introduced to.
This year, 72 countries participated with Saudi Arabia being the guest of honour and special emphasis placed on Palestinian and Spanish Cinema — a choice that organisers said highlighted the intersection between north and south, placing migration under an artistic lens.
The festival also paid tribute to Arab filmmakers, both living and dead, namely the Moroccan director Mohamed Abderrahmen Tazi and Egyptian director Daoud Abdel Sayed, as well as the late Algerian director Yamina Chouikh and late Tunisian director Kalthoum Bornaz.
“Through this 33rd edition, we continued to foster cultural decentralisation by bringing new sections to the festival and programming screenings in different parts of the country,” journalist and cinema critic Yosra Chikhaoui told The National.
“This year marks the first edition of JCC for kids. We are bringing more screenings as part of our “street cinema” section as well as continuing the special screenings for prisoners and members of the Tunisian army inside military bases,” Chikhaoui, who is a member of the festival’s media committee, added.
JCC in Prisons, now in its eighth year,is the fruit of a partnership between the Tunisian Ministries of Culture and Justice and the International Organisation Against Torture. This year, 12 films were showcased in three prison facilities, while juvenile detainees were transferred to Tunis for a special showcase in a cinema.
According to Ridha Behi, general director of this year’s festival, film screenings in prisons serve as a reminder of the right all people have to access and experience culture.
Awards, meanwhile, highlighted the multitude and variety on show, with a focus on filmmakers whose work depicts the struggles of their respective societies.
The Tanit d’Or award for best feature film was given to Tug of War, directed by Amil Shivji — marking the first time a film from Tanzania has won the award. Meanwhile, the Tanit d’Argent and Tanit de Bronze were respectively awarded to the films Under the Fig Trees by Erige Sehiri from Tunisia and Sharaf by Samir Nasr from Egypt
A consignment of blue ammonia has left Saudi Arabia for South Korea, representing a new milestone in the development of decarbonization solutions.
The development was first announced during the recent Saudi Green Initiative conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, and Vessel Seasurfer, carrying 25,000 metric tons (25 KMT) of low-carbon blue ammonia, is expected to reach its destination between Dec. 9 and 13 in the world’s first commercial shipment of its kind.
The accomplishment, which is an alternative to conventional gray ammonia, is part of a collaboration between Saudi Basic Industries Corporation Agri-Nutrients and Aramco.
Lotte Fine Chemical, which has a long-standing relationship with SABIC AN, will receive the low-carbon “cradle to gate” blue ammonia.
Abdulrahman Shamsaddin, SABIC AN CEO, said: “This shipment is another milestone in our journey toward carbon neutrality.
“We are proud to be a part of this pioneering solution, paving the way for further decarbonization efforts.
“Looking to the future, we are constantly working on breakthrough solutions to decarbonize our assets and deliver low-carbon solutions to our customers.”
Yong Suk Kim, LFC CEO, said: “We are delighted to enter this meaningful agreement with our long-term supplier, SABIC Agri-Nutrients, to receive the world’s first certified blue ammonia cargo.
“Building on our shared history, we are looking forward to moving forward together into a new era for ammonia. We believe that this shipment of blue ammonia will help lay the foundations for a global supply chain.”
Earlier this year, SABIC AN and Aramco received the world’s first independent certifications, recognizing blue ammonia and blue hydrogen production, from TUV Rheinland, a leading independent testing, inspection and certification agency, based in Germany.
The shipment of blue ammonia to South Korea will be the first to capitalize on this major certification achievement.
The new developments are aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, which focuses on low-carbon fuels, products, solutions and clean energy.
