Zakaria: establishing a memory for the festival and holding an exhibition of his holdings and inviting the previous winners of his prizes and showing their films The National Film Center, headed by Dr. Khalid Abdul Jalil, Advisor to the Minister of Culture for Cinema, is stepping up preparations for the 20th session of the Ismailia International Documentary and Short Film Festival from April 11 to 17. Critic Issam Zakaria, the festival's president, confirmed that preparations were being made for a celebration worthy of the 20th session, the largest in the history of Ismailia Film. He said that the most important element of the celebration philosophy is memory, in the sense that there is a comprehensive and comprehensive memory of the festival because we do not have in Egypt in general a full archive of anything. He explained that when he took charge of the festival he asked about the information, data and old publications about the festival and did not find them. For example, there is no limitation on the members of the arbitration committees and the names of the honorees in the previous sessions, at least so that they are not duplicated. There is no archive of catalogs, posters, This is the main idea of ​​this celebration: the establishment of a memory for this festival through the collection of its collections of books and posters from various sources in the National Center And outside, among others, such as the film expert Dr. Magdi Abdel Rahman and Mona Gueiba, the late critic Samir Farid's camp, from which we obtained some of the holdings of the course he directed. He added that the collection of these acquisitions took a long time and required great effort, in addition to the collection of films of the previous sessions themselves, which did not exist despite the existence of an item in the list of those sessions that provides the festival to keep a copy of each film agrees to the presentation, and collect photographs and film material for the 19 sessions , Which were not available, all these materials have been assembled and arranged, and we are still finding more of them, to make an exhibition of the collection and archive of the festival at the Ismailia Cultural Palace throughout the twentieth session, and after the closing on April 17 next we will move this exhibition from Ismailia to a permanent headquarters Palm National Cinema focused on being the memory of the festival we are working on. We also seek to put the entire material on CDs and on the festival website to be available to anyone who wants to take advantage of it. Zakaria pointed out that the celebration also includes the invitation of some of the winners of the prizes of the previous sessions and the work of a program of about 50 films, Egyptian, Arab and foreign, that will also be established memory film can be followed through the review of all the previous sessions of the festival .. He said: "I think this program Is the most important thing that distinguishes our celebration and I expect it to be more popular than the competition itself. " The jury will also be composed of the winners of the previous festival awards, consisting of seven filmmakers, five of whom were settled. He pointed out that in the framework of the celebration will be honored one of those who contributed to the establishment of the festival, a great critic Ali Abu Shadi, and one of those who contributed to the founding of the festival or in their composition and intellectual film, director Samir Abdullah .. A book will be issued on each of the honored and will be held for each Of which a symposium during the festival days. The festival also publishes a book on the occasion of the celebration, prepared by Dr. Magdi Abdel Rahman, documenting its history from the first session till now. It is similar to the documentary book issued two years ago about the festival, but it is more complete and accurate to the critic Issam Zakaria. Many of the international festivals, catalogs of some of the courses are incomplete, and do not contain the data of some of the films that were presented, including the two won the Golden Prize for the best work in the festival in general, not found in the catalogs of their respective sessions, nor in the previous book, From completing this And in a new book diminishing, more complete and accurate. "