Founder's Statement

The Vision Cinema International Biennale Manifesto

A Document of Dream and Legacy

From wonder, the cave dweller created art; from discovery, knowledge. Art evolved into both passion and vocation, while discovery became civilization itself.

 

Perhaps it all began with the observation of a shadow—that silent companion which represents us in permanence and transformation alike. It lengthens and contracts, follows us and precedes us, yet it is born beneath our very feet, inseparable from us for as long as there is even the faintest trace of light.

 

In that moment, shadows became the frame that gathered the multitude, while the cave wall became both the screen and the frame of human perception.

 

I have long believed that our earliest ancestors discovered the language of movement and visual expression long before they mastered song, music, or painting. At times I imagine myself among them, seated inside a cave beside a flickering fire, watching my own silhouette dance upon the walls as the flames shifted with the currents of air, giving birth to ever-changing forms.

 

Perhaps I folded my hands, raised my fingers, arched my back, or walked upon all fours. Perhaps I imitated the creatures of the wilderness, recounting events to women and children before language itself existed. Perhaps I composed successive scenes resembling a theatrical performance—or even an animated film. Laughter may have echoed through the cave; astonishment may have filled the silence; perhaps some of those first "spectators" pursed their lips in puzzled incomprehension.

 

These are, of course, only possibilities that I imagine today, after nearly three hundred thousand years of Homo sapiens upon this earth.

 

Those earliest attempts were, perhaps, humanity's first efforts to describe, to express, and to weave reality together with hope. I believe that shadow preceded rhythm, movement preceded drawing, and from their union emerged the first seeds of creativity.

 

Humanity would go on to invent music and colour, discover the poetic power of language, chant, song, and children's rhymes. Thus began the first footsteps of art—guided by imagination, transformed through time into history: a history continuously retold, reinterpreted, and renewed.

 

Over the centuries, art gradually retreated from the public realm into the privileged spheres of the elite—from forests, public squares, and open roads to theatres, villas, and royal courts. Yet for the marginalized, there remained the shadow play, the traditional puppet theatre, and the oral epics that preserved humanity's legendary heroic tales.

 

From shadow, rhythm, and imitation, our anthropological ancestor discovered performance. They imitated nature—its sounds and movements—embodied gods, spoke in their voices, recorded experience, preserved memory, refined expression, and ultimately created theatre by uniting every visual, auditory, and performative art into a single language.

 

Then, at the close of the nineteenth century, came the film strip and the camera.

 

Cinema was born.

 

Art descended from the ceremonial halls of palaces to the tables of cafés—in Paris, Berlin, Alexandria—and, from there, to the rest of the world.

 

 

"What we perceive as peripheral in a given moment may, with the passage of time,

 become a new centre of vision."

Tamer Salah El-Din

Founder of the Vision Cinema International Biennale

 

Egyptian writer, journalist, and researcher who has been active in journalism, media, and cultural affairs for more than three decades. Throughout his career, he has devoted much of his work to the study of cinematic imagery, film criticism, and the relationship between time and the evolving aesthetic value of creative works.

 

The idea of the Vision Cinema International Biennale emerged from the conviction that many films were never granted the recognition they truly deserved upon their initial release, and that time often reveals artistic qualities that remained unseen at the moment of production or first reception.

 

From this conviction, the Biennale was founded as an independent cultural platform dedicated to the critical and artistic re-evaluation of cinematic works through an institutional framework founded upon integrity, independence, and intellectual pluralism.

 

Under the Biennale Charter, the Founder serves as Founder and Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees, while fully respecting the institutional independence of the Executive Administration, the Screening Committees, and the Jury Panels.