Radio, TV festival to be inaugurated Tuesday

Egypt's Minister of Information Safwat Al Sherif will open on Tuesday evening the 6th session of the Cairo Radio and Television Festival.

Organized by the Radio and Television Union, the festival will be held during the period July 11-19 and attended by 18 Arab countries which will present 600 radio and television works.

The Minister of Information will address the inaugural meeting, which will be held at Cheops Hall at the Cairo International Conferences Center.

He will deal with the importance of the festival as a means of bolstering Arab cooperation in the field of radio and television production to stress Arab identity in the age of open skies and space channels.

Sherif will stress Egypt's support, with all its distinguished potentials in the media field, to its Arab brethren.

Egypt acquired these potentials under the rule of President Hosni Mubarak as represented in a giant media infrastructure which includes two communications and information satellites manufactured in accordance to latest technologies of the media of the future under the digital system, a Media Production City which is the first of its kind in the Arab world, Africa and the Middle East and the Free Media Zone which represents a new concept in the field of Egyptian and Arab media in the face of the world.

Sherif will raise the banner of the festival signaling the opening of the 6th session.

The Minister of Information decided to have all works presented by participating countries shown in the various television regional channels in periods before and after transmission and on the FM wave in addition to daily reports from the festival. Scenes from the festival will be displayed on the Internet, for the first time.

Sherif will on the second day of the festival open an exhibition and a fair held on the sidelines of the festival on an area of 10,000 square meters.