What relationship does visual culture have to the world we live in?

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During the July sit-in in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the site of the revolution at the beginning of the year, a group of artists and filmmakers lit up a corner of the square with an open-source 'revolutionary' screen: Tahrir Cinema.

Every night, a filmmaker, journalist or activist presented a selection of visual material related to the Egyptian revolution, from raw footage to documentaries, from HD to mobile camera quality, from animation to youtube virals.

Although the Egyptian revolution has been called the 'Facebook revolution', the majority of Egyptians did not and still do not have access to the Internet and therefore have no access to news coverage other than through the Egyptian media. Tahrir Cinema attracted an audience made up of people influenced by the Egyptian media propaganda machine, people who participated in the first sit-in, which forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to relinquish power in February 2011, people occupying the square, or simply people passing by.

Tahrir Cinema acted as a catalyst for distributing footage to as many people as possible who had no access to such material, to building a visual archive on the revolution and to reflect and share experiences on the political events that have taken place since the 25th of January.

Tahrir Cinema participated first and foremost in re-enforcing the Egyptian revolution.