Girls At The Cairo National Stadium

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Girls At The Cairo National Stadium (2006) (in Hebrew: בנות באצטדיון הלאומי של קהיר) is a video created by Israeli artist and filmmaker Nimrod Kamer (in Hebrew: נמרוד קמר).

The video's goal as stated by Kamer is to document a cultural phenomenon and the general atmosphere of the match. The work was shot at an international football (soccer) game between the national teams of Egypt and Congo, at Cairo's National Stadium on February the 3th, 2006.

It's main focus is on the Egyptian girls who attended the game, setting a record-high number of Egyptian women in a single football match, and specifically in the 2006 African Cup of Nations, hosted by Egypt at that time.

Kamer attended the football game as a reporter for a local newspaper, with friend and poet Yoni Raz Portugali. In Israel, there are few women in the crowd at football games. Hence Kamer wished to show the liberal side of the Egyptian crowd.

The video was shown on several art biennales in the Middle East and in Europe and created some controversy after being uploaded to Google Video [1].

[edit] Controversy

A photo from the middle of the video

After writing an article on the issue (Egyptian girls on stadiums) on the Israeli "Walla!" website [2], and publishing the video on Google Video, an article was written in The Daily Star Egypt [3] by reporter Farah El Alfy. It appeared that several girls who were shot in the video, complained that the video used footage of them without their permission. Some rejected the Kamer's claim that this video was documenting a 'cultural phenomenon', while others, such as Egyptian real estate manager Ali El Awadi found the video quite positive. El Awadi was quoted saying "On the contrary, I think it’s good to show that at last everyone can go to the stadium, girls included".

The topic was discussed widely on the Egyptian Soccer forums [4] and Nimrod Kamer addressed the controversy, in a post on the forum on May 30th, 2006. This message was also sent to the Daily Star Egypt, as an official response to the controversy, and has been published. [5]