Director

Férid Boughedir

Tunisia  | 1983 | 98 min | Arabic, French, English with subtitles in English

• Producer Férid Boughedir
• Production Company Marsa Films
• Screenplay Férid Boughedir
• Cinematography Sekou Ouédraogo, Charly Meunier
• Editing Andrée Davanture
• Sound Abdelkader Alouani, Alain Garnier
• Cast
• Contacts

  Les Films du Losange

  a.lesort@filmsdulosange.fr

About the Film

This film was shot in 1983, when Férid Boughedir was shifting from film criticism to filmmaking, with no desire to abandon his position as a historian and critic of Arab and African cinema. Hence we see in this film—like in his other great works about Arab cinema—how he combines his qualities as a director, critic and historian. In parallel, he showcases the history of two decades of African author cinema through a number of Sub-Saharan African filmmakers who revived their work, which was radically different from those of the colonial filmmakers—whether or not they stood in good faith with the local people.

For more than an hour and a half, Boughedir presents a collection comprising dozens of video extracts from iconic African films; testimonies by their creators; and dialogues with some of the most important figures, notably Osman Sembane, Safi Fay, Med Hendou, Suleiman Sissi and Gaston Kabouri. This is in addition to an interview with Tunisian historian and critic Tahir Sharia, about a cinema to which he granted a rare place at the Carthage Film Festival.

What we have here is a rare documentation that may seem nostalgic about an authentic cinematic world, which has unfortunately become a memory today. However, the author of Halfaouine and Summer of La Goulette—and specifically this ambitious documentary, revived by the latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival—knew how to tell of the role of art, and cinema in particular, in the restoration of the social liberation cause of those who remained, in their own way, possessive of the seventh art since its birth. It may be time to restore it today.

Ibrahim Al Aris