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The notes below were
issued by Channel Four television to accompany a
season of Arab films shown on British TV in the late
1980s. See also:
Films with a social conscience
EVEN
between Lebanon and Iraq in the Middle East or the countries of
the Maghreb (North Africa) there are enormous regional and
national differences. That said, the following is effectively a
lineage of socially-conscious filmmaking with only passing
reference to its specific contexts.
Along with Chahine, the filmmakers in Egypt most associated
with this trend are Chadi Abdessalam, for only one feature, The
Mummy (1969), and Tewfiq Salah, whose early formation also
included Victoria College. Salah’s work is somewhat limited by
the effects of censorship whims but includes, with The
Cheated
(1971), The Rebels (1969), set in a hospital and dealing with
inegalitarian healthcare and authority without responsibility. The
film was withheld for some time and only released with cuts.
Syria is one of the few Arab countries to have had indigenous
production since the beginning (1928) and to host a regular film
festival; however, production is sporadic. Samir Zikra and Oussama
Mohommad are two young filmmakers who trained in Moscow and are
just beginning their careers. The best known films remain The
Leopard (1972) and Mr. Progressive (1973) by Nabil
Maleh; Omar Amiralay’s documentary Daily Life In A Syrian
Village (1974) and Mohamed Malass’s City Dreams
(1984), about a child’s entry into the adult world of the 40s.
In several countries production is largely state-controlled:
Iraq, for example, produced Mutawa And Bahia about an
Egyptian peasant trying to persuade Sadat not to sign the Camp
David Accord, several films have been set against the war and a
few aimed at entertaining a tired population. In other countries
production could be greater, but is not: the Kuwaiti Khaled el
Seddiq, for example, studied in India and made his first feature
in 1972 (The Cruel Sea), about the pre-oil life of pearl
divers; his second was The Wedding Of Zein (1976), based on
the novel by Sudanese writer, Tayeb Saleh.
The Lebanon, on the other hand, has had commercial studio
facilities for years and several producers and cinema-owners of
Lebanese origin operate throughout Africa and the Arab world. But
the work of younger filmmakers has featured the war situation.
Documentary-maker Jocelyn Saab has recently completed her first
fiction: Sweet Adolescent Love. Mai Masri (Palestinian) and
Jean Chamoun, on the other hand, have only made documentaries, of
which Fleurs D’ajonc (Gorse flowers) is the most recent
(1986). It shows women in the country, resisting, protecting,
nurturing against all odds. Maroun Baghdadi has made both
documentaries and the fiction The Little Wars in 1985;
Borhane Alaouie has also made Beirut, The Encounter (1982)
and a documentary on the Lebanese Shi’a. In 1980, the Algerian
filmmaker, Farouk Belloufa, made Nah’la, in which a
journalist goes to report on the situation and becomes involved in
Beirut life (unlike Schlondorff’s hero for whom the city and
people were just a backdrop).
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Farouk Beloufa directing Nah'la
(1980)
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Egypt has not been without other ‘new generation’
filmmakers: for example, Ali Abdekhalek (Song On The Track
1983); Daoud Abdelsayed, Atef Tayeb, Achraf Fahmi; and Mohamed
Khan, whose work includes an adaptation of H E Bates’ The
Darling Buds of May (Reported Missing).
But a real departure for the new socially-aware cinema had
taken place in North Africa, when after several decades of French
colonialism, Tunisia and Morocco became independent in 1956, and
Algeria in 1962. Filmmakers emerged "armed with the
philosophy of Frantz Fanon" and the idea that "the
political liberation of the third world was going to change the
face of humanity" and bring about the "birth of a new
man" (Ferid Boughedir)
The Algerian struggle had been portrayed by Chahine in Djamila
The Algerian (1958), based on the book by Maitrel Jacques
Verges about the trial of resistance fighter Djamila Bouhired.
Otherwise there had effectively been nothing and for several years
producing the history of colonialism and of the war and
celebrating the heroes and martyrs was a major project of the
State-run cinema: Dawn Of The Damned (1965) and The
Opium And The Baton (1969) by Ahmed Rachedi; Wind From The
Aures (1966) and Chronicle Of The Years Of The Brazier
(1974) by Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina and prize-winners at the Cannes
Film Festival. In 1972 the National Cinema Office (ONCIC) was set
up and in 1975 the 2nd Congress of the Panafrican Federation of
Filmmakers was held in Algiers and produced its first manifesto.
The Agrarian Revolution had begun in the early 70s and was
reflected in films like NOUA (Abdelaziz Tolbi, 1972), made for the
national television, RTA, which has made a considerable
contribution to film production. In the same year ONCIC produced a
poetic black and white film by Mohamed Bouamari, The Charcoal
Burner: "a look at the other Algeria, frustrated and
precarious, invaded by industrialisation". (Lotfi Maherzi)
Recent Algerian films of interest have included Leila And
The Others (Sid Ali Mazif, 1978) - ‘a new feminist image’;
A Wife For My Son (Ali Ghanem, 1982); Autopsy Of A
Conspiracy (Slim Riad, 1978); La Nouba Of The Women Of
Mount Chenoua (1978) and La Zerda Or Songs Of Forgetting
(1980), both by Algeria’s only woman filmmaker, Assia Djebar, to
date; The First Step (1980) and The Refusal (1985)
by Mohamed Bouamari.
There is also no shortage of comedy - in the characters of
Inspector Tahar and Hassen Terro - but a complete knockout for the
audience (and those in power) was Omar
Gatlato by Merzak
Allouache (1975) about a poor and crowded Algiers neighbourhood
and Omar, doing an unsatisfying clerical job and so macho that
when he is interested in a girl he can’t follow through and
approach her. Here was not the "new man" but the actual
man in the street and the film blew fresh air through the
cinema and established thinking. Later there was Allouache’s Adventures
Of A Hero (1978); Ali In Wonderland (Ahmed Rachedi,
1980) and The Crazy Years Of The Twist (Mahmoud Zemmouri,
1982).
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Omar Gatlato by
Merzak Allouache (1975)
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In Tunisia there is a state structure but not Algena s
commitment. Brahim Babai produced the first socially-aware film, And
Tomorrow? (1971). Hitherto Tunisia’s assets were (and
remain) the Carthage Film festival (inaugurated by one of the ‘founding
fathers’ of Arab cinema, Tahar Cheriaa) and a thriving amateur
film movement (whose founder, Omar Khlifl, made The Dawn,
1966 and The Challenge, 1985) and through which many
filmmakers have passed. An international breakthrough came when Soleil
Des Hyenes (Ridha Behi, 1977) was presented at the Cannes Film
Festival. Abdellatif Ben Amar followed in 1979 with Aziza after
the equally praiseworthy Sejnane (1974), both focussing on
the situation of women; in 1982 Taieb Louhichi made Shadow Of
Earth, and in 1984 Nacer Khemir made Les Baliseurs Du
Desert in the vein of 1001 Nights. Ferid Boughedir
produced the excellent documentary Camera Arabe in 1987,
which ended with an appreciation of Nouri Bouzid’s first
feature. Man Of Ashes (1987) has been warmly received for
its honest study of masculinity, child abuse and its portrayal of
a time in Tunisia when Jews and Arabs lived peaceably together.
In many ways Moroccan filmmakers have the hardest job, trying
to produce without real state support or interest. Virtually
everyone is on his own and some have only made one film. The first
important Moroccan film did not appear until 1970: Hamid Benani’s
Traces, about an orphan boy with a strict Muslim adoptive
father. Two years later Souhel Ben Barka made A Thousand And
One Hands about the situation of dyeworkers, following it in
1975 with The Petrol War Won’t Happen and in 1982 with Amok,
a story set against apartheid and liberally based on Paton’s Cry
my Beloved Country. Ben Barka has now constructed a private
but much-needed cinema complex in the country.
The 1970s also saw two Moroccan films of poetic realism -
Moumen Smihi’s El Chergui Or The Violent Silence (1975)
about the problems of a young wife; and Ahmed el Maanouni’s Oh
The Days (1978), a dramatised documentary about peasant life
and the imagined promise of France. But in the 80s Moroccan
filmmakers have been the most prolific: Mohamed Reggab’s The
Hairdresser From A Poor District (1982); Taieb Sakkiki’s
Zeft (1984); as well as The Great Voyage by Abderrahmane
Tazi (1981), Mustapha Derkaoui’s The Beautiful Days Of
Scheherazade (1982) and Jilali Ferhati’s Reed Dolls
(1981), which tells the tragic story of a young girl married
against her wishes, widowed while pregnant and deprived of her
children by the courts.
See also:
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