Algerian cinema

This article offers a reading of Kaouther Adimi's debut novel centered on sexual convivencia, the rhetoric of revolt, and the question of virility (radjla). Published in Algeria under the title Des ballerines de papicha in 2010, her novel was re-published in France soon after the beginning of the Tunisian Revolution under a new title, L'Envers des autres. This article attempts to show the ways in which this short novel offers a polyphonic portrait of the urban and disoriented youth of Algiers via its "mascunins-fémilins" characters. This convivencia between the masculine and the feminine runs throughout the text and the paratext. It turns into mascunin when the masculine component overpowers the feminine and vice versa. This article also evokes the intergenerational dynamics at play in the arts, by linking Adimi's written work to the cinematographic rendering of Merzak Allouache's Omar Gatlato and Tariq Teguia's Rome plutôt que Vous.

Mestman, M. “Estados Generales del Tercer Cine. Los documentos de Montreal, 1974”. Publicado en el Cuaderno número 3 Rehime, Buenos Aires, 2013-2014.
This book includes unedited and previously unpublished material that provides insight into world political cinema in the 1960s and 1970s: the conferences, workshops and debates of the Rencontres Internationales pour un Nouveau Cinéma, a conference held in Montreal, Canada from June 2-8, 1974. The conference was attended by filmmakers, producers and ’68 film groups from France and the first world, along with Latin American political filmmakers and representatives of burgeoning African cinema. The title proposed for this book, Estates Generals of Third Cinema, highlights the revolutionary nature of the projects that characterized these times.
Several fragments of the audiovisual recording of the conference (never before released) are included on the DVD that accompanies this book. These images allow us to reconstruct the debates of this intense political moment, debates among Latin Americans like Miguel Littín, Julio García Espinosa, Fernando Pino Solanas and Walter Achugar; Africans such as Med Hondo, Tahar Cheriaa, Férid Boughedir and Lamine Merbah; European critics like Guido Aristarco, Guy Hennebelle, Lino Micciché and Jean Partick Lebel; Canadians such as Fernand Dansereau, Gilles Groulx, André Paquet and Yvan Patry; as well as independent film distributors and groups like Slon/Iskra, Tricontinental, Mk2, The Other Cinema, and many others.
After this research, André Pâquet prepared a Dossier with lot of another Documents and video recordings of the Conferences of the meeting for the Cinématheque Québécoise:
http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/dossiers/rencontres-internationales-pour-un-nouveau-cinema/preambule/
There we can see two TV programs about the meeting (with english subtitles) that Mariano Mestman, Andrés Habegger and Fernando M. Peña made in Argentina, following the original research:
http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/dossiers/rencontres-internationales-pour-un-nouveau-cinema/documentaires-tv/
During 2015 M. Mestman and Masha Salazkina prepared a Special Topic on the Rencontres… for the Canadian Journal of Film Studies / Revue Canadienne d´Études Cinématographiques (V.24, N.2), including articles by Vicent Bouchard, Marion Froger, Michael Chanan, Ignacio del Valle, Jonathan Buchsbaum, Irene Rozsa and Viviane Saglier, and an interview with André Pâquet and Carol Faucher by André Habib. (In english and French):
http://www.filmstudies.ca/journal/cjfs/archives/24.2-fall-2015

Mi texto escrito para mi ciclo (13 proyecciones) "La Tricontinental. Cine, utopía e internacionalismo" para el Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid).
My text written for my film program (13 screenings) "Tricontinental. Cinema, Utopia and Internationalism for Museum Reina Sofía (Madrid).

This paper considers one of the watershed periods in the history of world cinema, the French film culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s, from the sociopolitical perspective of the Franco-Algerian War. Specifically, I will discuss a body of collectively authored, anti-colonial cinema, whose production, distribution, and exhibition contexts were organized by the activist filmmaker, René Vautier. Vautier is the only contemporary French filmmaker known to have extensively documented the cultural, social, and economic vicissitudes of both revolutionary and post-
colonial Algerian society. Over the course of the Algerian War, he established the Front de Libération National’s (FLN) official film unit, trained key Algerian filmmakers including Chérif Zennati and Abd el Hamid Mokdad, recorded the first-ever combat documentary, L’Algérie en flammes (1957), and collaborated with the profoundly influential anti-colonial philosopher, Frantz Fanon, on a short film about the war’s traumatic impact on Algerian children, J’ai huit ans (1962). In the wake of independence, Vautier aided in founding Algeria’s national film industry, and administered a program that directed two ciné-vans across hundreds of locations
to project pedagogical films for the nation’s illiterate peasantry. In France, Vautier’s cinema furnished an invaluable counter-visual archive to the state’s heavily policed representation of the war (Mirzoeff, 2011). His films were supported by a militant intellectual print culture (Combat, Positif, Image et son), and screened for a broad audience of intellectuals (Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Vidal-Naquet), activists and labour unions (Centre culturel populaire de Palente-les-Orchamps), and artists (Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, André Breton).

Yet despite Vautier’s crucial importance as both a film artist and educator, his work has almost vanished from orthodox Anglophone and Francophone film history writing (Brenez, 2001). In this paper, I will present a general introduction to his work, considering his treatment of the Franco-Algerian War in relation to the period’s now canonized art cinema. The “New Wave” tended to represent decolonization through modernist strategies of indirection and affective motifs of horror absence. This absence, moreover, was often symptomized as a crisis of French identity and its narcissistic self-misrecognition. Vautier’s work, by contrast, marks a rare
instance in which French cinema negotiated the war’s traumatic impact on Algerian subjectivity. In films including Peuple en marche (1963), J’ai huit ans (1963), and La Folle de Toujane (1973), decolonization is presented as a revolutionary, dialectical process, whose historical unfolding, consistent with the period’s anti-colonial philosophy, was inseparable from the movement and manifestation of bodies in public space. At the conclusion of the discussion, I consider how such historical images of the revolutionary Algerian masses continue to threaten the French state’s official narrative of the war as a police operation against a minority of terrorists.

Following the controversial life of Ali (Malik Benchita) and his “sister-in-law” Habiba (Bouchta Saidoun), Hassene Belaïd, a Franco-Algerian author and director, depicts the struggles of transsexuals in modern Algeria in his short film The Brother-in-law (N’sibi), which is released in 2014.  The story is set in the suburbs of Setif, in Algeria, and it portrays the life of Ali, a young working-class man who is trapped in a siloed and mundane life, and his “sister-in-law” Habiba that challenges the Algerian social constructs by being a symbol of a rejected lifestyle. Ali finds himself forced to give a ride to Habiba one evening, where he gets to enter her world and discover the atrocities that she has to endure as a result of being a transwoman. Transsexuality in Algeria is tolerated as an anomaly supposed to entertain people, something that only exists in the realm of humour, but not as a reality.  Thus, this article reviews Belaïd’s short film and provides a close analysis to the representation of queerness in Algerian cinema. Drawing upon Kaya Davies Hayon’s study (2017), which investigates the question of the body in Maghrebi films, this article particularly addresses the complexity of corporeal depiction in Algerian cinema, the perception of sexual and gender identities in Algerian society, and the complex understanding of transgender identity in a masculine environment.

Pour le Journal of Film Preservation 04.2015

Au sein de la Fédération Internationales des Archives de Film, la voix des cinémathèques membres du Maghreb et du Moyen Orient se fait peu entendre.

La Cinémathèque Algérienne, haut lieu de la cinéphilie engagée et pointue dans les années 60 et 70, a connu une longue période de déclin. Elle semble aujourd’hui renaitre sous l’impulsion du nouveau directeur, du Ministère de la Culture et du «Programme Patrimoine».

Au Service des Archives du Centre Cinématographique Marocain, les actualités marocaines et les productions nationales sont en partie inventoriées et restaurées, mais les conditions de conservation et d’accès aux collections restent insuffisantes.

Que ce soit en Algérie, au Maroc, mais aussi en Tunisie et au Liban, de nombreuses archives ont été victimes par le passé de politiques nationales peu soucieuses de la préservation de la mémoire (censure, destruction, mauvaise gestion), et les traces de ces exactions perdurent.

Particularité de la région, ce sont souvent les acteurs de la société civile, cinéastes, artistes, associations qui vont tenter de renverser la tendance à l’oubli et de sauvegarder la mémoire cinématographique, dans leurs luttes pour la démocratie et pour une meilleure connaissance de l’histoire.

Ainsi l’association UMAM à Beyrouth, qui dédie son travail à la préservation et la valorisation de la mémoire de la guerre civile, travaille actuellement à la sauvegarde des films et documents récupérés au sein de l’historique Studio Baalbeck avant sa destruction.

Ces projets indépendants peinent à se faire entendre du fait de leurs moyens limités alors même que le travail accompli est considérable.

La création d’un réseau, entre les institutions étatiques et les voix indépendantes, en vue de collaborations et d’actions conjointes, pourrait être une solution pour assurer la sauvegarde et la valorisation d’un patrimoine cinématographique régional actuellement en réel danger de disparition.
Un dialogue doit s’ouvrir en prenant en compte toutes ces particularités régionales, pour penser ensemble les perspectives du secteur.

Nous invitons toutes personnes souhaitant nous assister dans la création de ce réseau régional à nous rejoindre ; qu’elles soient directement concernées ou qu’elles souhaitent y apporter leur expertise.

In this article I study Merzak Allouache's Harragas (2009), a film devoted to the current crisis of migration from the South to the North of the Mediterranean. By focusing on the intangible barriers that the characters in this film have to cross in their trip from Algeria to Spain, I illustrate how the director employs a report-like realism to provide a lucid and even openly critical portrait of post-civil war Algeria. I analyze the director's references to the laws regulating migration approved by the Algerian parliament in 2008 and 2009, comparing them with the European legal frameworks regulating the movement of people across its borders, in order to reconstruct the terms of what I call the coalition, among Mediterranean countries, against the contemporary " wretched of the earth " .

Bliski Wschód. Społeczeństwa -polityka -tradycje" nr 7/2010 Do świata arabskiego kino dotarło bardzo wcześnie, bo już w 1896 roku w kawiarniach Kairu i Aleksandrii, a także Algieru i Oranu pokazywano publiczności pierwsze produkcje braci Lumière. Zaledwie rok później zapoznali się z nimi także widzowie tunezyjscy i marokańscy. 1 W początkowych latach w różnego rodzaju salach projekcyjnych, powstających stopniowo w większych miastach tak Maghrebu, jak i innych części świata arabskiego, wyświetlano jedynie filmy zachodnie -co nie dziwi zważywszy na fakt, że posiadaczami tego rodzaju obiektów byli głównie europejscy kolonizatorzy. Realia tych filmów coraz częściej jednak osadzone były w świecie kolonii, ponieważ tzw. Orient cieszył się ogromnym zainteresowaniem ze strony twórców europejskich. Wśród nich znaleźli się m.in. wspomniani już Louis i Auguste Lumière, którzy, poszukując plenerów do realizacji swoich filmów trafili do Algierii, Maroka i Egiptu. 2 Wszystkie te produkcje przeznaczone były jednak głównie dla widzów francuskojęzycznych -nie zawsze nawet sporządzano kopię z arabską wersją językową, co ograniczało rodowitym mieszkańcom podbitych krajów dostęp do tej formy rozrywki. Jedynie w Egipcie dość szybko pomyślano o arabskojęzycznej widowni. W okresie poprzedzającym odzyskanie niepodległości przez poszczególne kraje świata arabskiego kinematografia rozwijała się tam, w pewnym sensie, dwoma niezależnymi torami. Z jednej strony były to realizacje twórców europejskich, które nie pozwalają się wpisać w nurt kina arabskiego sensu stricto ze względu na znikomy udział miejscowej ludności w ich realizacji. Polityka kolonizatorów zmierzała do ograniczenia rozwoju kulturalnego podbitych terenów, jednak kino stanowiło tutaj niezwykle ważne narzędzie w rękach propagandy. Był to jeden z ważniejszych powodów, dla których kraje te przez wiele dziesięcioleci nie wykształciły własnego przemysłu filmowego. Z drugiej strony chlubnym wyjątkiem w kolonialnym świecie arabskim był egipski przemysł filmowy, który niemal od początku rozwijał się niezależnie od kolonialnego panowania, co więcej -na tyle prężnie, by w krótkim czasie zdominować cały obszar kinematografii arabskiej i przez pierwszych 40 lat swojego istnienia pozostawać jedynym kinem tworzonym w arabskiej części świata przez 1 samych Arabów. Początki zainteresowania filmem w tym kraju wiążą się z aktywnością francuskiej kompanii Pathé, która w latach bezpośrednio poprzedzających I wojnę światową sprowadziła do tego kraju wiele niemych filmów europejskich. Wyświetlano je we wciąż powstających w Egipcie kinoteatrach i spontanicznie zaimprowizowanych salach projekcyjnych -głównie na potrzeby mieszkających na terenie kraju obywateli państw europejskich. 3 Jacob M. Landau jako pierwszy egipski film długometrażowy wymienia eksperymentalny, niemy obraz al-Jumhūr al-miṣrī, 4 powstały w roku 1917 z udziałem znanego wówczas egipskiego aktora teatralnego, Alego El Kassara. Za pierwszą produkcję filmową sensu stricto, powstałą z udziałem zagranicznych -głównie amerykańskichspecjalistów uważa się jednak film Laīla z roku 1927. 5 W tym samym roku podjęto pierwszą, udaną próbę stworzenia filmu dźwiękowego -Aulād al-ḏḫawāt 6 Yusufa Wahbiego. Od 1928 roku w Egipcie produkowano minimum dwa filmy rocznie; liczba ta imponująco wzrastała w latach następnych. Postprodukcja odbywała się jednak w Europie, dopóki na przełomie 1934 i 35 roku nie powstało pierwsze egipskie studio filmowe -Studio Miṣr; od tego momentu datuje się faktyczny początek istnienia przemysłu filmowego w Egipcie. Pierwszymi produkcjami Studia Miṣr były musicale Al-warda al-baidaa i Wedad -sukces tego ostatniego niewątpliwie odegrał pewną rolę dla wzrastającej popularności kina jako rozrywki w Egipcie. 7

AAC – Les études culturelles : Enjeux, pistes et apports pour les recherches sur les cinémas d'Afrique et du Moyen-Orient Les cinémas d'Afrique et du Moyen Orient quels que soient les périmètres nationaux, régionaux ou continentaux qu'on privilégie à un moment et dans une situation donnée, constituent un ensemble d'histoires et de contextes politiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels de « cinémas des petites nations » spécifiques (Petrie dans Hjort) qui n'ont jusqu'à très récemment pas rassemblé une communauté de chercheurs. Les études pourtant importantes déjà menées, parfois depuis un certain temps, sont restées des travaux isolés (comme par exemple, Sadoul 1966, Vieyra 1973, etc.). C'est encore plus le cas des nombreuses recherches effectuées dans les pays concernés et qui ne circulent guère au-delà des frontières, lorsqu'elles n'ont pas complètement disparu ! La circulation des savoirs et l'accès à ceux-ci demeure donc un enjeu fondamental. Dans les recherches francophones, ce sont principalement les historiens qui ont renouvelé les questionnements autour du cinéma comme loisir, comme spectacle, la réception, les publics, etc., en s'attachant surtout à la période coloniale et postindépendance, ou des chercheurs en économie du cinéma (Forest 2011). Du côté anglophone, ce sont surtout les chercheurs dans les départements de langues et cultures francophones et dans les programmes d'études africaines et moyen-orientales qui ont contribué au développement des savoirs. Là encore, ce sont les films et leurs auteurs qui ont suscité le plus d'intérêt tandis que les questions liées à l'économie des films, leur circulation, les cultures de cinéma, les publics et la réception sont restées relativement marginales, mis à part les travaux nombreux consacrés aux festivals (Iordanova and Van de Peer 2014; Dovey 2015) et l'activité du réseau international Film Festival Research, comme ceux consacrés au cinéma transnational (Higbee 2014). Autre exception, l'industrie nigériane a suscité depuis deux décennies des travaux très stimulants, avec une production à bas coût de films de divertissement qui ont irrigué les marchés locaux, nationaux, régionaux, diasporiques, mais aussi fait des émules comme au Ghana ou en Côte d'Ivoire. Nous pourrions évoquer les nouveaux développements concernant le développement ex-nihilo de nouvelles industries du cinéma dans les pays du Golfe (Mingant, à paraître) ou la circulation des films en Afrique et au Moyen Orient (Benchenna et al. 2016). Les lieux de production et les réseaux de la circulation des films, les nouveaux formats privilégiés, nous imposent de sortir des cadres de la construction des savoirs qui faisaient des cinémas nationaux (réduits aux films réalisés) des marqueurs des identités nationales issues des nouvelles indépendances, d'autant que la pléthore s'est substituée à la rareté et que la place des productions locales ou régionales dans la consommation varie beaucoup. Une des ambitions du réseau HESCALE est de retourner le regard pour explorer non pas tant les contenus des films que s'intéresser aux filières et aux acteurs, à la façon dont les films sont faits et vus, la façon dont ils circulent et sont reçus dans les pays et régions concernés.

Merzak Allouache’s 2003 Chouchou tells the story of a transidentified undocumented Algerian immigrant who has just arrived in Paris. Like Allouache’s other films, it invites the viewer to think about the articulation between culture and masculinity. More specifically, Chouchou presents us with unusually ambiguous narratives of passing and crossing-over that complicate the traditional French-Algerian postcolonial paradigm. To the extent that issues of gender and ethnicity are never separated, it is never clear whether Chouchou’s attempts to pass (as a woman or as a refugee) should or can be interpreted as moments of opposition or conformism. In Chouchou, cross-dressing both reiterates the norm and serves to highlight differences within masculinity and femininity as well as within ethnicity.

This paper analyses the film’s contribution to the recent debate about how Western democracies use their definition of sexual freedom as a political weapon. Does Chouchou avoid the risk of reinforcing the stereotypical opposition between the homophobic native land and the xenophobic adopted country? Or how does Allouache’s double critique of Algerian and French inhospitality to sexual or national others succeed in opening up new spaces? Neither femininity nor France constitutes an ideal or idealized destination for a migrant who must constantly renegotiate his objectives. The process of constantly deferred arrival also redefines Algeria as a multiple site of origin: just as Chouchou does not become a (Western) woman, he was never simply an Algerian (man). Chouchou thus invites us to ascertain to what extent the relationship between cross dressing, dissidence and/or conformism changes in each specific context.

This article explores the connections between vulnerability, gender and terrorist violence in relation to Algerian filmmaker Djamila Sahraoui's Yema (2012). The film is situated in relation to Sahraoui's oeuvre, and within wider debates around the changing nature of political violence and its representation in Maghrebi and Hollywood cinema. This comparison underlines Yema's innovatory formal and thematic focus on slow narrative time, sparse aesthetics and fragile, intimate images. The article then examines the concept of vulnerability in relation to terrorism, in particular linking Sahraoui's choice of formal techniques to the film's thematic staging of various modes of physical and psychical vulnerability. The allegorical and mythological motifs used in Yema are considered in relation to the gendering of the figures of victim and agent in the film. Through a feminist reconfiguration of the myth of Medea, the article suggests that in the film's dramatisation of a mother who inflicts suffering, larger questions are raised about personal and political responses to the feelings of exposure that terrorist violence engenders.

Since December 2010, millions of people in various countries in the Middle East have repeatedly protested for justice, freedom and democracy. The ongoing Arab spring has recently taken over Algeria, where it is linked to the turbulent revolutionary history of the country which fought it's independency by a bloody war against the French colonial. After Algeria's declaration of independence in 1962, the capital Algiers quickly turned into a hub for all kinds of revolutionaries, intellectuals, freedom fighters and artists from all over the world. Outstanding individuals such as Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Amílcar Cabral, Eldridge Cleaver and Nelson Mandela spent time in Algiers, from where they discussed and planned anti-imperial and emancipatory struggles for justice, from the perspective of the global south. On one hand the project is dedicated to the role of the arts and the artists within the current process of democratization. It examines the impact and conditions of their artistic and activist work within the development of a capable civil society. On the other hand it points on Algiers forgotten history as a mecca for revolutionaries and their ideas and as a former hub for the fight for global justice. By collecting and examinating the stories of Algiers' revolutionary actors, the project aims to connect the recent spirit of hope and freedom that has flared up against authoritarian regimes in many middle eastern countries, to the historical past.

for the Modern Heritage Observer, published November 2013
http://issuu.com/modernheritageobservatory/docs/moho_publication_en-digital-per_pag/1?e=9749835/5557151

“The most beautiful Algerian‭ ‬film was the Cinémathèque Algérienne” Serge Daney‭, ‬French film critic

History
Since its inception by Ahmed Houcine and Jean Michel‭ ‬Arnold on January 23‭, ‬1965‭, ‬shortly after Algerian independence‭, ‬the‭ ‬Cinémathèque Algérienne has stood out as a unique institution in‭ ‬the Arab world‭, ‬a space for expression‭, ‬critique‭, ‬and the‭ ‬study of film-making‭; ‬a hub for film lovers and the‭ ‬most prominent international filmmakers and thinkers‭, ‬and a haven for‭ ‬Portuguese‭, ‬African and Latin American revolutionary filmmakers‭.‬

Luc Chaullet‭ (‬alias‭ ‬Omar Zelig‭, ‬a radio host‭) ‬told El Watan newspaper of‭ ‬his memories of a place that‭ ‬”allowed thousands of students‭ ‬to become familiar with Jean-Luc Godard‭, ‬Orson Welles‭, ‬Federico‭ ‬Fellini‭, ‬and the early films of Wim Wenders‭, ‬Sulayman Cissé‭, ‬Jean Rouch‭ (...), ‬with important debates and reflections on our African‭-‬ness or Arab-ness and on the bright future that‭ ‬no doubt awaited the peoples of what then was still‭ ‬called the Third World‭.‬1

It was a moment‭ ‬of ground-breaking and revolutionary utopia and political reflection‭, ‬but‭ ‬also a rare meeting of African‭, ‬Maghreb and World cinema‭.‬The list of great film directors who came to present‭ ‬their works and meet the public at the Cinémathèque is‭ ‬endless‭: ‬Joseph Von Sternberg, Nicholas Ray‭, ‬Rainer Werner Fassbinder‭, ‬Werner‭ ‬Herzog‭, ‬Volker Schlondorf‭, ‬Wim Wenders‭, ‬Margareth Von Trotta‭, ‬Francesco Rosi‭, ‬Ettore Scola‭, ‬Jean Luc Godard‭, ‬Andre Cayatte‭, ‬Marcel Carné‭, ‬Sembene‭ ‬Ousmane‭, ‬Suleymane Cissé‭, ‬Youssef Chahine‭, ‬Salah Abu Seif‭, ‬Henri Barakat‭ (...).‬

The current director of the Cinémathèque Algérienne‭, ‬Lyes Semiane‭, ‬proudly‭ ‬recalls that the Cinémathèque Algérienne discovered filmmaking industries that were‭ ‬still unknown or ignored‭; ‬in Uzbekistan‭, ‬Lebanon‭, ‬Iran‭, ‬Mongolia‭, ‬China‭, ‬Argentina‭, ‬Brazil‭, ‬Peru‭, ‬Mexico Chile‭, ‬South Africa‭, ‬North Korea and‭ ‬South Korea‭, ‬etc”. The Cinémathèque’s audience was composed‭ ‬of Algerian and foreign intellectuals‭, ‬but also local residents and‭ ‬many students‭.

(...)

Ramon Lobato’s 2012 Shadow Economies, like Piratages audiovisuels by Tristan Mattelart (2011), explores the construction of categories of analysis, and questions certain assumptions about the circulation and consumption of goods, mainly films on counterfeited DVDs or digital platforms. With photographs of a slew of DVDs covering the streets of a drab and anonymous suburb on the former and that a small DVD stall wall papered with colorful DVDs in their transparent cases on the latter, both book covers capture the readers’ imagination with a similar evocation of the technological revolution that has made a vast quantity of films available everywhere--but with questions looming about its repercussions on film economies. But this new imagery of a film culture gone global, supposedly inflationary, also overshadows the ways in which the circulation of films has remained a much more complex process and how precisely it has been influenced by this technological revolution. There is a need to understand how the old and the new have coexisted side by side in people’s interaction with films and the reconfiguration of the film industries, and how economic and symbolic value is still being produced concomitantly in different places via the circulation of these films, or lack thereof (Lobato 2016),  on different formats, media or platforms. There is a need for research projects that explore the material circulation and actual availability of large numbers of films at any point and anywhere: what films were available where, when, on what media, and for whom? The purpose of this article is to understand how this imaginary of global access to film operates in the lifecycle of the films, and the different practises it has generated.

To do so, the article will examine the chain of intermediaries participating in the production and circulation of films on different media, their conception of cinema and adaptation to change. It will explore the process through which a specific film project becomes accessible in different formats on different media and platforms at different points of its lifecycle. More precisely, it will focus on the circulation of films directed by women filmmakers with Maghrebi funding, i.e. Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian sources of funding, a purposefully small corpus of under 50 films produced over 35 years as a means to put to the test certain questions about the circulation of films in the digital age, what we know and what we don’t know about it.
The first part will focus on the specificity of such a corpus of films and provide a brief survey of the knowledge that has already been produced about the transnational circulation of these films in the cinemas. The following part based on a range of interviews with DVD publishers, will explore the changing landscape of film circulation and more particularly the national and transnational dimensions of the video market for these films. The third and final part will focus on the growing availability of the films on the Internet and new strategies that mesh older conceptions of film culture with new business practices against the backdrop of piracy as the “other” of the film industry.

Abou Leila d'Amin Sidi-Boumédiène Par Emna Mrabet Sortie le 15/07/2020 https://www.culturopoing.com/cinema/sorties-salles-cinema/amin-sidi-boumediene-abou-leila/20200715 Après trois court-métrages remarqués (Demain Alger ? L'île et Serial K) Amin Sidi-Boumédiène réalise, en 2019, Abou Leila son premier long métrage de fiction sélectionné à la 58ème semaine de la critique du festival de Cannes. Signant un film à la lisière du cinéma de genre, il rejoint ses compères Karim Moussaoui, Hassen Ferhani, Djamel Kerkar, Sofia Djemma, génération montante à l'origine du renouveau du cinéma algérien. Se distinguant par une recherche esthétique ambitieuse, les films de cette nouvelle génération osent aborder, de façon frontale ou en filigrane, le trauma causé par la décennie noire en Algérie. Amin Sidi-Boumédiène situe ainsi son film en 1994 et suit le périple tortueux de deux amis qui cheminent ensemble vers le sud et le désert algérien. Les deux hommes responsables du meurtre survenant dans la scène d'introduction disparaissent totalement du reste de la diégèse, comme si un duo-celui des deux amis-venait se substituer à un autre. Le film laisse rapidement entrevoir les rôles assignés à chacun : Lotfi, le plus fort et le plus solide-campé par le cinéaste Lyès Salem-qui est là pour protéger son ami S.-Slimane Benouari-fragile et instable, et l'aider à remonter la pente depuis qu'il s'est trouvé, dans l'exercice de ses fonctions de policier, pris dans une altercation mortelle. Avançant par mutations successives, la narration finit par dessiner un tableau psychédélique, sorte de projection de l'espace mental des personnages, porté par une bande-son faisant la part belle aux rock progressif et par des flashbacks traduisant le refoulé de l'un des personnages principaux. Le récit, tel un rêve diurne, constitue dès lors un ensemble mouvant progressant vers l'hallucination et la folie et renvoie, par là-même, au vécu du cinéaste qui a traversé adolescent, la décennie noire.

In this long-form conversation Anne Barlow and Sylvie Fortin speak with Zineb Sedira about her recent work around the Festival panafricain d'Alger (1969), the import of biennials on contemporary artistic practice and her project for the 2022 Venice Biennale, which revolves around late-1960s revolutionary cinema.

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities, the chapters in this volume serve to open up any discourse that would tie 'Algeria' to a fi xed meaning or construct it in ways that neglect the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. The confi guration of these essays invites us to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specifi c place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. The intention of this volume is to offer historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in how we move between frames of enquiry. These chapters – written by specialists in Algerian history, politics, music, sport, youth cultures, literature, cultural associations and art – offer the granularity of microhistories, fi eldwork interviews and studies of the marginal in order to break up a synthetic overview and offer keener insights into the ways in which the complexity of Algerian nation-building are culturally negotiated, public spaces are reclaimed, and Algeria reimagined through practices that draw upon the country's past and its transnational present.

Este estudio pretende identificar los factores políticos y socio-económicos que determinan la proyección de una determinada imagen del islamista y cómo esto se ve condicionado por los imperativos ideológicos y políticos propios de los procesos de construcción de identidades nacionales de los países árabes. Ello, a su vez, se asocia a los intentos de los respectivos regímenes por controlar la imagen que el medio audiovisual proyecta en relación a la oposición islamista. Parto de la premisa de que, al ser las representaciones audiovisuales producto por una parte de una industria asociada a las elites político-económicas, pero, por otro lado, un vehículo de expresión de la intelectualidad árabe, éstas pueden aportar nueva información y perspectivas sobre cómo se ha reflexionado sobre el surgimiento y expansión de los movimientos islamistas en las sociedades de estos países; así mismo, nos pueden ilustrar sobre la posible implicación del poder político en el proceso de producción y exhibición de las producciones cinematográficas que tratan el tema del islamismo. En estas páginas se analiza una selección representativa de películas de Egipto y Argelia. Se ha optado por comparar estos dos países ya que, respecto a sus vecinos, han experimentado el auge del fenómeno islamista de manera temprana y, por tanto, cuentan con una producción cinematográfica que ha abordado este tema de manera significativa. De acuerdo con sus características, las películas bajo estudio se dividen en dos grandes grupos: aquellas que son resultado de una caricaturización de los islamistas por motivos políticos, circunstancia propia sobre todo de producciones que datan de principios de los 90; y aquellas que son producto de un enfoque reflexivo, pues a la hora de abordar el fenómeno de la radicalización islamista tienen en cuenta condicionantes sociales. Así, por lo general, tienen como protagonistas a jóvenes urbanos, varones, lo cual se acerca más la realidad sociológica de este fenómeno. Por último, señalamos que en producciones más recientes, posteriores a las revueltas árabes, se identifica la aparición de la crítica a determinadas políticas antiterroristas.

Shortly after independence (1962), Algeria put in place different political discourses in order to strengthen the new citizens' identity. Among these the discourse about manhood was crucial and focused especially on the mugiàhid, the fighter, whose fighting allowed Algeria to conquer freedom and independence. Therefore, manhood became a political ideal engaging social and political dynamics devoted to define theman-woman relationship...

Mentre infuriava la “campagna di lancio” dell’ultimo Houellebecq (rapidamente interrotta dopo gli attentati parigini del 7-8 gennaio in un fugace istante di lucidità o di convenienza), se n’erano da poco andati in punta di piedi due “grandi”: Fanny Colonna, antropologa storica e sociologa fuori dai canoni, e René Vautier, ribelle con la macchina da presa, che avevano incarnato, vivendolo intensamente ciascuno a modo suo, il legame complesso e contraddittorio che la storia ha lasciato in eredità a due sponde del Mediterraneo, l’Algeria e la Francia. Fanny Colonna era nata nel 1934 a Theniet-el-Haâd, a sud-est di Algeri, ed è morta a Parigi nel novembre scorso; René Vautier, bretone, era nato nel 1928 a Camaret-sur-Mer ma viveva da anni a Cancale dove è morto ai primi di gennaio.
Nel momento in cui l’area mediterranea torna a essere il baricentro degli equilibri mondiali dopo decenni di predominanza dello scacchiere atlantico, è utile ricordare questi due percorsi intellettuali che pur essendo quanto mai diversi ci raccontano un’altra storia della vicenda franco-algerina (e, più in generale, mediterranea), testimoniando di uno scarto, di un’altra possibilità. Di un’ostinata battaglia di intelligenza e libertà, sicuramente minoritaria ma non per questo meno importante.

National cinemas with their origins in wars of independence have been considered strong markers of national identity for obvious reasons. At its heyday in the 1970s, the nationalized Algerian film industry produced films that promoted and/or critiqued a national project, occasionally attracting large domestic audiences. This project of a national revolutionary cinema did not, however, survive. We show what articles by intellectuals in Algeria treating the demise of a national project can tell us about the underlying conceptions of national cinema. We also examine the vision of Algerian cinema disseminated by French film journals. “Born in the maquis”, Algerian cinema was regarded as a unique experiment understood primarily as a mode of production that placed the members of the film industry in an (untenable) collective subject position. In the end this abstract adherence to the principles of the Revolution gave way to a traditional conception of a political auteur cinema.

Cinema was introduced in North Africa at the same time as in the rest of the world. In Algeria and Tunisia, 1896 was marked by the visit of Lumière operators and 1908 by the opening of the first movie theatres. Originally, film distribution in the Maghreb was in the hands of French companies. Pathé and Gaumont handled the films of Hollywood distributors who were not yet major international players, and French-U.S. cooperation was the order of the day. After World War I, as the U.S. majors started to dominate international film distribution (Thompson, 1985), they opened independent international distribution offices, including in North Africa. By 1926, U.S. films held 85% of the market share in the Maghreb. Economic competition between French and U.S. distributors and their films was accentuated by the colonial context, with Algeria being a French department, and Tunisia and Morocco protectorates. Although no specific discriminatory measures were applied by the authorities, censors did observe U.S. films with attention, banning any production judged detrimental to French interests. This was the case of Paramount’s Beau Geste in 1939, a film condemned for its representation of the French Legion. Censorship became particularly harsh after World War II in a context of growing discontent of the local population. U.S. westerns, showing confrontations between indigenous and white people, were seen as dangerous, and frequently cut and banned. During the colonial era, competition between U.S. films and French films was thus economic as well as ideological. Market shares, social peace and cultural models were all at stake. Distributors were however in constant contact. They were part of the same world. Hollywood films were in fact distributed by the U.S. majors’ French offices and circulated dubbed in French. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the involvement in film distribution of the newly independent states led French and U.S. distributors to ally more closely, joining in a common ‘Western front’ in order to try and safeguard their economic position. From the 1910s to the 1960s, the relationship between the worlds of Hollywood films and French films was thus characterized both by intense competition and by the cooperation over common interests, and can be analyzed through the concept of ‘coopetition’ as applied by Pardo (2007) to the film industry.

Panel Title: Film Industries in the Middle East and North Africa

Chair: Patricia Caille

Hollywood vs. France? Coopetition in the North African Market (1910s-1960s)/Nolwenn Mingant

Relaying American Films in Iran after WWII/Kaveh Askari

Shoe string or no shoe string? The impact of Arab Film Festivals on MENA cinema production/Florence Martin

Researching film spectatorship in North Africa/Patricia Caille

On the occasion of the screening of his film Zanj Revolution as part of the Cultural Resistance International Film Festival - Lebanon*, Tariq Teguia is invited to talk with his public about cinema, revolution and engagement, between Algiers and Beirut. The talk will be presented and animated by Wassyla Tamzali and Olivier Hadouchi. During that discussion, Tamzali and Hadouchi will present Teguia's film and interact with him around notion of cinema and revolution, links between Algeria and Lebanon, director's intention.

À l’occasion de la sortie de Cinéma et Guerre de Libération. Algérie, les batailles d’images, aux éditions Chihab, et pour sa première contribution à Textures du temps, Olivier Hadouchi a rencontré l’auteur, Ahmed Bedjaoui pour évoquer pour évoquer certaines de ces batailles du cinéma algérien. Ahmed Bedjaoui a été journaliste, enseignant-chercheur, producteur à la Radio-Télévision algérienne (RTA), directeur et programmateur à la Cinémathèque algérienne. Il fut également l’animateur, pendant une vingtaine d’années, à la télévision d’une émission de cinéma devenue culte.