Metaphors of Space in Contemporary Maghrebi-French Cinema
Panel 011, 2009 Annual Meeting
On Saturday, November 21 at 5:00 pm
Panel Description
Representations of shantytowns, suburban/banlieue high-rises, oppressive domestic spaces and dimly lit streets feature prominently in Maghrebi-French film, along with cafés, cyberspace, open land and seascapes. This panel will focus on two pivotal questions: how do these representations of space perpetuate, or call into question, what has often been identified as the socially realist aspect of Maghrebi-French cinema and how have films produced after 1995 entered into dialogue with the early films of the 1980s? The poetic and political dimensions of the films in question in this panel translate a longstanding relationship between subjectivity and space, and reveal the complexity of representation in a postcolonial context. Given the colonial history between France and the Maghreb, such a context cannot elude ongoing relationships of power, inherent too in the spaces represented.
In its deft negotiation of multiple and hybrid national, cultural, gendered, and social spaces Maghrebi-French film-- in its widest acceptance as inclusive of short films, documentaries and features-- has been increasingly at the forefront of popular and academic debate. Whereas the early films of the 1980s tended predominantly towards questions of social exclusion, marginalization, disenfranchisement and immigration, contemporary films have increasingly included narratives which tell other realities and other imaginaries and thus unfold in different spaces and at a different speed. From considerations of the timeless expanse of the countryside or desert landscapes to the time-space compression of cyberspace, the papers in this panel examine the extent to which Maghrebi-French film has been transformed and transformative over the past twenty-five years. The objective of the panel is ultimately to question whether it is still possible and/or useful to continue to view and read this cinema—through the spaces it presents—as socially realist or if other characteristics have emerged that lead us beyond such considerations.
From La faute à Voltaire (2000) to L’esquive (2003) and La graine et le mulet (2007), Franco-Tunisian filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche underscores the critical importance of spoken language among all communities, in particular among communities that share multiple idioms and more than one language. However, the spoken word, for Kechiche, is not only about what is said or how it is said but equally important is where it is spoken. This paper will examine spaces of enunciation, such as the empty lands around the high-rises in L’esquive or the underground metro in La faute à Voltaire and domestic interiors in La graine et le mulet in order to shed light on the way in which space interacts with language creatively and ultimately transforms the way communities are represented; for example to what extent does a linguistic idiom that mixes French and Arabic effect different results when spoken in a government office or in a football terrain in the suburbs of Paris? How do certain spaces require certain registers of language and what are the consequences when expectations of these rules are destabilized? Combining vertiginous dialogues, reflective silences or musical interludes and everyday spaces, Kechiche testifies to a poetic of a twenty-first century quotidian that, despite conforming to a tradition of social realism in Maghrebi-French cinema, presents us with something radically innovative; by transforming the representation of spaces that are commonly featured as “problematic”, or marginal, into central places of everyday practices he eschews the clichés which characterize a number of works by his predecessors. Drawing on theoretical works of Marc Augé and Michel De Certeau, this paper ultimately aims to contribute to an ongoing dialogue about Franco-Maghrebi relations today.
I will explore several points of entry in films, especially by Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache, but also some Tunisian (by Ladjimi and El Fani for instance), and Moroccan films (Faouzi Bensaidi) that use cyberspace and city space to redefine strategic power relationships.
"Women's Wiles": Recasting Moroccan Berber Space in Film"
Since 1999 Moroccan women filmmakers have been reshaping the contours of their country. Not only are they promoting daring transformations in socio-cultural mores, they are also seeking to recapture past effaced stories of women, minorities, children and the oppressed of Moroccan history. This paper will consider the cinematographic works of filmmakers such as Narjis Nejjar, Farida Benlyazid, and Yasmine Kassari as they seek to redefine the parameters of feminine and minority spaces in Morocco.
Given the intertwined relationship between France and Algeria at the time of the French-Algerian war, the situation of pieds noirs and harkis was already a complex one that would seem to transcend and complicate the nationalist identification needed to go to war for one’s country. The reluctance of the French to discuss the French-Algerian war on any profound level is well known; on the other side, Algerian depictions of the war have not always been easily produced or widely available. Missing has been the Algerian point of view of the war as seen from within Algeria, although there are films such as Vivre au paradis (1998) by Bourlem Guerdjou – born in France of Algerian descent– that treat the subject of Algerian immigrants living in France during the war. Since the 1975 Algerian production Chronicle of the Smoldering Years, popular films by Algerian filmmakers about the war itself have been needed, although again the question of who is ‘Algerian’ enough to achieve this is complex. La Trahison (2005) was made by a pied noir and is the story of harkis in a French army unit; Cartouches gaulouises (2007), made by Algerian-born Mehdi Charef, tells the story from a child’s point of view; L’ennemi intime (2007) also follows a French platoon in Algeria; Mon colonel (2006) diverges again from Algeria in investigating the murder of a French colonel in Paris 20 years after the war. The documentary Woman Is Courage narrates the story of Algerian resistance fighter Louisette Ighilahriz.
What can we piece together from these films about what the war was for ethnic Algerians and in which sites it took place? We know that in La bataille d’Algers (the most important film on the topic, made by an Italian), the Algerians attack the French in public spaces – on their boulevards, in their cafés – while the French invade the Algerians’ homes and places of work. This paper will explore the modern depiction of these battlefield spaces as seen by transnational Algerian/French filmmakers.
