Flyers with the words “Cairo Burning— Oct. 4” could be found around campus in the days leading up to the event.
The “Cairo Burning” event turned out to be a screening of the documentary “1/2 Revolution,” which focuses on the Egyptian uprising in early 2011 through the view of the documentary’s director, Karim El Hakim.
The School of Communication’s Center for Social Media posted the flyers with a mysterious nature to intrigue students enough to draw them to the screening, according to Abigail Maravalli, project coordinator of the Center for Social Media.
The film followed the lives a young group of friends who did not consider themselves political but found themselves involved in the Tahrir Square protests, El Hakim said.
El Hakim, a first generation Egyptian-American, moved back to Egypt a few years before the revolution and has been living there since.
The name of the film comes from the Western misconception that the revolution was finished, El Hakim said.
“It’s not a cozy and neat little ending…we decided on the title early on [for this reason],” he said.
El Hakim said the documentary focuses on the characters instead of the revolution itself because he found their personal stories to be more interesting.
“The strength of this film is the human space, it is about what happens to them, not what happens to Egypt,” he said.
This screening was part of the 13th annual Human Rights Film series, which was co-sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law as well as the Center for Social Media.
“1/2 Revolution” will be shown at the E Street Cinema on Oct. 25.
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