AS we mentioned last week, the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) has developed the ‘Cultural Panorama’ or simply ‘Culturama’, which allows films and photographs to be projected onto nine continuous screens.
This system has won international recognition and in 2004 a mobile ‘Culturama’ was created to travel abroad. It weighs about 500kg and is accompanied by a team of seven to set up and operate it.
In October 2004, the unit travelled for a week to the International Book Fair of Frankfurt, where the Arab countries were the guests of honor. In February 2005, it attended the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, where it stayed for about a month.
The following November, the portable unit went to Tunisia for the exhibition accompanying the World Summit on Information Technology, at the invitation of the Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.
In December 2006, Culturama visited Hong Kong as a part of an exhibition organized by a meeting of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), again supported by the Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.
As a part of the Egyptian-German ‘Year of Science and Technology’, the portable unit, at the request of the Minister of Higher Education, travelled to Berlin in February 2007. In May this year, at the request of the Ministry of Culture, it travelled to Geneva to represent Egypt at the Geneva International Book Fair, where Egypt was the guest of honor.
Finally, on the occasion of the Japanese-¬Egyptian ‘Year of Science and Technology’ and on the sidelines of the Science and Technology Forum (STS), Culturama was installed in Kyoto for a week and then moved to Tokyo for ten days, until last Sunday, October 26.
Culturama is due to visit Turin next May, on its eighth trip ‘abroad in five years. Culturama is also permanently exhibited in seven different places in Egypt: the CULTNAT headquarters in the Smart Village, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the New Central Library of Cairo University, Luxor Cultural Centre, the Savoy Hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh and el-Gouna resort near Hurghada.
Many famous people have seen Culturama in action, including presidents, prime ministers and ministers from all over the world.
