During the month of May, Egypt was hosted as the guest of honour at Torino International Book Fait, Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Torino. That was reflected in having the largest area in the fair for the Egyptian pavilion with the CULTURAMA of CULTNAT (panoramic projection on nine screens) centered in its facade.
The interactive CULTURAMA was showing, in Italian, the different aspects of Egyptian cultural heritage across history starting from the Pharaonic period, passing by the Greco-¬Roman to the Coptic to the Islamic periods and fmal1y, modern times. During the fair, the seats of the CULTURAMA were always full with spectators and most of the time there were more people standing in the back and on the sideways In addition to ,hildren sitting on the ground in the front.
There was another surprise during the last day of the fair; an Egyptian folkloric dance group (The Nile Troupe) participating in the event came in between the CULTURAMA sessions and intervened by singing and dancing between the screen and the audience.
The rest of the Egyptian pavilion was divided into sub-areas displaying publications from the different publishing houses. There was a special corner exhibiting the Egyptian Arabic cal¬ligraphy and a third corner showing live the making of the Khayamia, whicn is a typical Egyptian handicraft.
Near to the Egyptian pavilion there was a terrace, which had two main functions: one of them was exhibiting Egyptian paintings of famous Egyptian painters like Ibrahim e1- Desouki, Nazli Madkur. Moustafa el·Razzaz and Ahmed Selim, the other function was conferencing. The terrace was used to
show several presentations, for seminars and round tables on the Egyptian cultural life and heritage. A conference on the italian archeological discoveries in Egypt carried out by Ali Raduan, another on the Grand Egyptian Museum by Mohamed Ghoneim, a lecture by me about Egyptian cultural heritage and a very special lecture given by Zahi Hawass about new arche¬ological discoveries are just a few examples.
In addition. there were lecture by Gaber Asfour on the cul¬ture of diversity, writer Khairy Shalaby about creative novel writing and Khaled Azzab about the Italians in Egypt. There were lectures from the Italian side 0n similar subjects; Eleni Vassilika, the director of Torino Egyptian Museum. talked about the future of the Egyptian Museum of Torino, and Carlo Bonotto introduced his book Egyptian Magic, which talks about the magic and the beliefs behind the Bedouin handcrafts.
That was just a sample of the many activities and lectures that took place in the Egyptian pavilion at the Torino International Book Fair, the last day of which featured tradi¬tional Egyptian performances by the Nile Folk Dance Troupe.
