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Reading Indigneous Female Narratives in Amazigh Films
Abstract
We know from the work of Benedict Anderson, Brian Edwards and other cultural historians that the terms “North Africa” or “The Magreb,” besides designating geographical borders, transport social and political histories and the losses and victories of colonial and independence struggles from periods long past into contemporary discourse. The term Tamazghra, a neologism coined after the Amazigh World Congress in 1996 to designate the transnational space inhabited by Amazigh peoples, re-invents, in the words of Amazigh scholar and translator Brahim El Guabli, an “idyllic land of origins” where different Amazigh cultural actors have drawn inspiration to gradually recover political as well as creative agency and imagine a visible and viable indigeneity. This paper will examine four female-centric films by female directors who engage with Amazighity implicitly or explicitly as they narrate this shared conflictual past and the individual processes of (re)inventing contemporary social and cultural identities.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Algeria
Maghreb
Morocco
Sub Area
None