Nourredine Lakhmari and Faouzi Bensaidi tap into the Moroccan underworld in their three recent films centered around crooked cops, prostitutes, murderers and criminals. Bensaidi’s What A Wonderful World (2006) sets the distinctly film noir tone for the three decidedly different yet “related by genre and subject” films –his Death for Sale (2011) and Lakhmari’s (2012) Zero. All films have either sustained huge successes at the Moroccan box office (Zero) or in international sales (WWW), Death for Sale even the Moroccan entry for the 85th annual Academy Awards and many cinema festivals.* In fact Zero had more viewers and earned more money in Moroccan theaters than Fast & Furious 6, Gravity or any international or Moroccan film-- 4 653 531,00 dhs earned. All three films received more than 4 million dhs in funding from the CCM--this in a time when youth across Morocco gather in protest against unemployment and disenfranchisement. Dirty cops, prostitutes, murderers, crimes and violence –some might say the hallmarks of film noir and the hallmarks of society in disarray-- link these films and solicit applause from Moroccan youth audiences while receiving criticism from conservative social elements who despise seeing Morocco thus represented onscreen. The two directors, so heavily invested in the underworld milieu, represent on one hand hope and on the other abject despair of ever escaping social and economic circumstances. Perhaps that’s why they resonate so astoundingly with youth audiences who still today find themselves in dire social and economic straits. The World Bank report in June 2012 averred that around 30 percent of Moroccans aged between 15 and 29 —44 percent of the working age population — were unemployed.** It is my contention that films such as these resonate with audiences who see themselves and their realities depicted onscreen. This paper explores the social facets of the films and investigates their positioning as film noir or neo-noir, a term generally describing crime dramas of a certain style and quality produced in recent years or outside of the US. Films noir tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often described by critics as “alienated" and in the words of Silver, "filled with existential bitterness”.*** Thus perhaps describing Moroccan youth problems of today? *CCM; Bilan de l'année cinématographique 2013 Date : 15/02/2014 ** http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/world-bank-morocco-youth-unemployment-is-very-serious/ *** Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (1999). The Noir Style. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.

The focus of this paper explores the role of heavy metal music in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, and how this genre of music, with its emphasis on societal critique, was dealt with by the authorities in attempts of censorship during the highly publicized Moroccan Satanism Trials in 2003. Religion and law intermingle at every step in dealing with the heavy metal scene and those who participate within it, particularly associated with the representations and imagery of Satan linked to the charges and accusations against the accused participants. As Morocco and the MENA region have continued to see increasing percentages of youth in their overall populations, resistance and backlash through expressive forms have become increasingly common in response to limited opportunity and possibilities for stable futures. This paper will be grounded in discussions of music and its historical use as alternative and unsilenced histories, as well as discussion of the genre of heavy metal working to become a focus for community building for youth in Morocco and in the broader confines of the Middle East and North Africa. I will examine music and its relations to Islam briefly, as well as a look into the functions and motivations for use of the genre of heavy metal by current youth populations. Who are the people who chose to use this form of expression in order to attempt to shift their everyday norms? What have these Satanism trials done for the future of Morocco and the MENA area? Through an examination of the heavy metal movements and their associated Satanism trials in Morocco, this paper discusses the how law has been activated in these situations, the community that has been growing from this genre of music, and the government’s efforts of censorship; this music genre has continually applied pressure to authorities, and have, even if in small ways, inspired hope for citizens that MENA countries begin to shift forms of government to forms that will welcome more freedom of speech and action.

In 2014, the sole Tunisian feature film entered at the Carthage Film Festival provoked a scandal of inadequacy. Created outside of Tunisia’s public filmmaking establishment in a decidedly amateur style, critics panned Jilani Saadi’s Bidoun 2 for its lack of narrative. Even the film’s title denotes something “empty” or meaningless in Tunisian dialectical Arabic; to call a film “bidoun” suggests that it isn’t worth watching. In this paper, I recuperate the narrative lack of Bidoun 2 and read it as emblematic of a new aesthetic of precarious life in Tunisian cultural production. If the golden age of Tunisian cinema (1986-2006) was driven by allegorical narratives of liberal struggle for personal freedom against a neo-patriarchal postcolonial state (Lang 2014), I argue that Bidoun 2 signals a post-revolutionary aesthetic for Tunisian filmmaking dominated by the picaresque mode. Comprised of an interlinking series of random events that resist the closure of grand allegorical narrative, the picaresque is the genre par excellence of political transition and anxiety. Bidoun 2 is a road movie without destination, which follows the peregrinations of two young people thrown together by happenstance: a suicidal youth humiliated in his relationship with a married woman, and a girl who embraces homelessness as an act of rebellion. Bidoun 2 thus departs from the celebration of effervescent youth activism against an aging dictatorial state, and confronts viewers with affects of social malaise that have only deepened in the wake of the 2011 revolution. Jilani Saadi hones in on the boredom, contingencies and anxieties that fracture revolutionary myth making, and lend a sense of indirection to the slack, dead time of provisional governance that has characterized Tunisia’s democratic transition. The film’s narrative style evokes a social milieu where hopelessness and social precariousness continue to be the dominating refrains for the majority of Tunisians after the heat and dust of revolutionary euphoria have settled. Juxtaposing the fragmentary adventures of the film’s key protagonists, together with scenes from recent Tunisian documentary film such as El-Gort and Amirs aux Pays de Merveilles, this paper examines the aesthetic production of everyday life in Tunisia as imagined through the picaresque lens of Bidoun 2.

January 25, 2015 marked the fourth anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and ended his 30 years of autocratic rule. Since that time Egypt has experienced continuing street protests, clashes between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious and secularist parties, three presidents, a new constitution, and an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai desert. Throughout these years of chaos however, Egypt’s ever vibrant artistic world has continued to operate. Indeed, in the larger regional context, the revolutions that occurred throughout the Arab world as a result of the Arab Spring included a florescence of artistic activity. Egyptian literary critic Samia Mehrez has argued that “One of the most remarkable accomplishments of the various uprisings in the Arab World since January 2011 has been the radical transformation of the relationship between people, their bodies, and space; a transformation that has enabled sustained mass convergence, conversation, and agency for new publics whose access to and participation in public space has for decades been controlled by oppressive, authoritarian regimes” (2012: 14). In Egypt, one way in which this new freedom has been marked has been the appearance of graffiti art, public performance art and exhibitions in which Egyptians claim space for themselves, discuss their relationship to the state, and to international entities that have so profoundly impacted Egyptian politics and economy. This paper discusses some of these artistic events as they were performed in 2012, around the first anniversary of the Revolution. It will focuses specifically on events staged by The Choir Project (mashru` koraal) that I witnessed in January 2012. These events expressed harsh criticism of both Mubarak and the then ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces, while at the same time, expressing hopes and ideas for Egypt’s future. The Choir Project (mashru` koraal) is an ongoing project that invites people from all walks of life to put their hopes, concerns, jokes and woes into song. The group started in 2010, and regularly meets in workshops to collaborate in writing songs and then hold public performances. This paper is based on interview material with participants, and translation, explication and analysis of some of the lyrics. Through exposition of the work of this group I intend to show how one important example of collaborative art and performance is functioning in post-Revolutionary Egypt to express and elaborate concerns of citizens.