“Poussières de Juillet”, produced in 1967 by Hachemi El-Chérif, is taken from a poem by Kateb Yacine. "We made a film on the return of the ashes of Emir Abdelkader, to Algeria. It was the opportunity to make a film on the ancestors with M'hamed Issiakhem. He designed glass plates on the basis of my texts. Then we had actors collaborate. It was a film which cost us a total of 300 dinars, proof that we could do work for television without too much money. We won two first international prizes at the Belgrade festival. We left the original of the film with the Egyptians in Alexandria and they lost it. We kept a copy but over time I wonder what happened to it, because there is no not even had a screening, they say it still exists, but I don't know in what state." Kateb Yacine, July 28, 1986, interview with Arlette Casas.
Jean Sénac, born in Béni Saf in Algeria in 1926 and died in Algiers in 1973, is today considered one of the great French writers and poets and the only one of his reputation to have accompanied the Algerian revolution before November 1954. part of all the debates and got involved, very early and with immense enthusiasm, in a work of commitment which ended badly. His poetry, his sexual preferences and his political lyricism work against him: rejected as much by the Pieds Noirs as by the FLN activists then by the power in place in Algiers, Jean Sénac was assassinated in 1973 at his home in Algiers, in circumstances never clarified.
El uno de noviembre de 1954, el Frente de Liberación Nacional de Argelia anuncia la guerra por la independencia del país. Francia, colonizador desde 1830, se precipita a reforzar su contingente militar en cada rincón del país y evitar el avance rebelde. Un pequeño Chaoui, nacido en una zona montañosa del país, ve derrumbarse su plácida infancia en medio de un fuego cruzado que no entiende. El relato, inspirado en testimonios reales, se construye con imágenes del fondo de archivos del ejército francés. De ese diálogo aparentemente disociado entre imagen y palabra nace un sensible homenaje a la memoria que reposa en los archivos y a la voz ignorada de sus protagonistas.
The image of French prisoners was very often evoked in Algerian cinema and literature, but until today, no Algerian or even European report or documentary had given voice to one of these French prisoners of the war of Algeria. In the interest of truth and writing history, we set out in search of one of these French witnesses. This witness is René Rouby, prisoner of Amirouche's group for more than 114 days in 1958 in the Akfadou region in Kabylia. This is the first testimony from a French prisoner of the ALN (the National Liberation Army).
En 1967, Visconti llegó a Argel para el rodaje de El extranjero con Mastroianni y Anna Karina. Camus, durante su vida, siempre se había negado a permitir que una de sus novelas fuera llevada a la pantalla. Su familia tomó otra decisión. El rodaje de la película se vivió en Argel, como un regreso póstumo del escritor a Argel. Durante el rodaje, un joven cineasta especializado en documentales, Gérard Patris, intenta informar sobre el impacto del rodaje de El extranjero en los argelinos. Intercalando secuencias del rodaje de la película de Visconti, filma a Poncet, Maisonseul, Bénisti y Sénac, amigos de Camus, en plenas discusiones para situar a Camus y su obra en un contexto sociológico e histórico. “Se nos ocurrió la idea de mostrar a las personas, a los demás y a nosotros mismos como si todos pudieran ser Meursault, o al menos los testigos de su drama”.
Cheikh Djemaï looks back on the genesis of Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature film, The Battle of Algiers (1965). Through archive images, extracts from the film and interviews with personalities, the filmmaker retraces the journey of a major work - from the events of the Algiers Casbah (1956-1957) to the presentation of the Lion of 'Or causing the anger of the French delegation in Venice - which left its mark as much in the history of cinema as in that of Algeria.
He is a 75-year-old half-blind man. He takes 3000 steps every day. Since 2004 he has made a decision: he will no longer talk about cinema. Boudjemâa, our living memory. That of Algerian cinema, African cinema, Arab cinema, cinema in short. The Algiers Cinematheque. The “masterpiece of Algerian cinema”. Boudjemâa Karèche directed it for 34 years. So why does Boudjemâa no longer talk about cinema? The answer lies next to the circumstances which caused his ouster from the Cinémathèque. Boudjemâa was silent. The time has come for him to let the word think for itself.
“Les Fusils De La Liberté” (1961) is a docu-fiction which recounts the difficulties overcome by an ALN detachment whose perilous mission is to transport weapons and ammunition from Tunisia across the Algerian Sahara during the Algerian liberation war (1954-1962) against the French army of occupation.
"Yasmina", filmada en 1961 en plena guerra de Argelia, cuenta la historia de una pequeña niña argelina con su gallina y su familia cuyo padre murió en un bombardeo del ejército de ocupación colonial francés. La familia, tras un largo viaje, se dirige hacia los campos de refugiados de la frontera con Túnez. Producidas por el Servicio de Cine del Gobierno Provisional de la República de Argelia (GPRA) en plena guerra de independencia, estas películas tenían como objetivo volver a informar a la población y a la opinión pública internacional sobre los abusos cometidos por el ejército colonial francés: la tortura , detenciones y ejecuciones arbitrarias, bombardeos con napalm, incendios en los aduars, pueblos enteros borrados del mapa, etc. que los medios franceses calificaron de campaña de "pacificación". Estos últimos censuran o reorientan cualquier imagen que pueda dañar la narrativa colonial.
The daily life and tribulations of colorful residents in the millennial popular district of the Casbah of Algiers.
In the midst of the Algerian liberation war, two characters, a meddah (traditional storyteller) and a guerrab (water distributor), having become aware of their subhuman condition in their own country, join the National Liberation Army (ALN) to fight against inhumane colonialism. They will climb the ranks to become political commissioners before falling on the field of honor, the first in a skirmish and the other in Barberousse prison (Serkadji) where he will be guillotined.
Pas De Blanc À La Une, by Youcef Bouchouchi, treatises the brutality of the conflict during the war of independence in Algeria from 1854 to 1962, and the systematic use of torture which pushes even the most hesitant to make up their minds.
Who remembers Mohamed Zinet? In the eyes of French spectators who reserve his face and his frail silhouette, he is simply the “Arab actor” of French films of the 1970s, from Yves Boisset to Claude Lelouch. In Algeria, he's a completely different character... A child of the Casbah, he is the brilliant author of a film shot in the streets of Algiers in 1970, Tahya Ya Didou. Through this unique work, Zinet invents a new cinema, tells another story, shows the Algerians like never before. In the footsteps of his elder, in the alleys of the Casbah or on the port of Algiers, Mohammed Latrèche will retrace the story of Tahya Ya Didou and its director.
Orientalism is a literary and artistic movement born in Western Europe in the 18th century. Through its scale and popularity, throughout the 19th century, it marked the interest and curiosity of artists and writers for the countries of the West (the Maghreb) or the Levant (the Middle East). Orientalism was born from the fascination of the Ottoman Empire and followed its slow disintegration and the progression of European colonizations. This exotic trend is associated with all the artistic movements of the 19th century, academic, romantic, realistic or even impressionist. It is present in architecture, music, painting, literature, poetry... Picturesque aesthetics, confusing styles, civilizations and eras, orientalism has created numerous clichés and clichés that we still find today in literature or cinema.
A musical journey with stories of Rai music, starting with the Algerian city of Oran, where Rai music originated, the shift that Cheikha Rimitti made in Rai music and how it became known to the public, and the developments that followed.
Ikach, is a farce in two acts in popular Arabic, written by André Sarrouy and adapted and directed by himself. A critique of marriage in colonial Algeria at a time when women were little taken into account. Cunning of women and stupidity of husbands, on an original soundtrack composed by Mohamed Iguerbouchène.
The film, shot in 1938, is part of a series entitled “The true face of Algeria”. The film highlights the proximity of Algiers to Paris and promotes air travel. The commentary supporting the images highlights the urban dynamism (“Every day, a new skyscraper replaces a wasteland”) and the comparison with Paris (“Algiers is often nicknamed the Paris of North Africa because of its elegance become proverbial). Contemporary architectural achievements are described as the sign of “grandiose modernism”: “we love the new, the bold”. But the point does not forget the buildings illustrating “the Moorish, classic and attractive style”. The description of the Casbah also attempts to understand the architectural organization but also the diversity and even the atmosphere.
Chants d’Automne (Song of Autumn), is a story of daily life on a colonial farm, at the start of the war of liberation in Algeria, describing individual and group behavior in this context. An unthinkable, even dangerous, romantic relationship, born in this context between Catherine, daughter of a settler, and Abdelmalek, son of a blacksmith. Managing his vast property in a feudal manner, Monsieur Marcel whose only ambition is his personal enrichment to the detriment of the community. Everyone fears his authority except his daughter Catherine, a student in France, who returns home during the holidays. She does not stop herself from expressing to him her ideas of justice which go against family and colonial practices. Catherine and Abdelmalek's romance makes relationships increasingly strained, but the call for freedom will be stronger than a woman's love.
Directed by Pierre Clément and Djamel-Eddine Chanderli, produced by the FLN Information Service in 1958, this film is a rare document. Pierre Clément is considered one of the founders of Algerian cinema. In this film he shows images of Algerian refugee camps in Tunisia and their living conditions. A restored DVD version released in 2016, from the 35 mm original donated by Pierre Clément to the Contemporary International Documentation Library (BDIC).
En el siglo XVIII, la amenaza bárbara se agravó. En julio de 1785, dos barcos estadounidenses fueron devueltos a Argel; En el invierno de 1793, once barcos americanos con tripulaciones encadenadas estaban en manos del Dey de Argel. Para asegurar la libertad de movimiento de su flota mercante, Estados Unidos se vio obligado a firmar tratados con los principales estados bárbaros ya pagar sumas considerables en garantías de no ataques. Con Marruecos, tratado de 1786, 30.000 dólares; Trípoli, 4 de noviembre de 1796, $56.000; Túnez, agosto de 1797, $107.000. Pero el más costoso y humillante fue el Dey de Argel del 5 de septiembre de 1795, un "tratado de paz y amistad" que costó casi un millón de dólares (incluido un rescate de 525.000 dólares por los esclavos estadounidenses liberados) e implicó la obligación de pagar 20.000 dólares por la llegada de cada nuevo cónsul y 17.000 dólares en obsequios anuales a altos funcionarios argelinos...