The fest concluded with the premiere of James Ivory's Surviving Picasso, and a special tribute celebrating 100 years of Egyptian cinema, marking the Lumiere's film debut in Cairo in January 1896.

"We have established the festival to highlight films from the middle east and show foreign films to the Egyptian public, numbering about one million, in more than 14 theatres around Cairo," said festival president Saed Eldin Wahba.

The festival jury, headed by Venice film fest topper Gian Luigi Rondi, gave the highest prize, the Golden Pyramid to the Egyptian comedy A Girl Called Apple by Rafaat El Mihi. Other prizes went to Best Director Greek filmmaker Pantelis Voulagris for Acropole and the Naguib Mahfouz Jury Prize for Best First Film for Sandrine Veysse's Does it Snow at Christmas. For the first time, a US$30,000 prize was given to the Best Arabic Film. It went to Haifa by Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi.

The scaled-down market attracted a limited number of buyers, with the current cable and satellite television boom attributed to the decline of Egyptian film output. Three years ago, Egypt produced 75 films annually; 24 films in 1995 and 12 films last year.

"We should invite TV reps from around the Middle East to the market to encourage selling Egyptian films and developing more finance between film and television to energise the local film industry," said Laser TV company president Raymond Iskander. Janet Fine