RADICAL MODERNISMS: RETRACING ARAB AND NORTH AFRICAN FILM HISTORIES is a two-part program curated by Peter Limbrick, Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz and author of Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi.
This program addresses aesthetic and cultural experiments that emerged in Arab and North African cinema from the 1960s, experiments that showed filmmakers and artists responding to histories of colonialism and the challenges of the present. Drawing on local vernaculars and international influences alike, these filmmakers created radical forms that deserve continued attention and discussion as well as urgent efforts of preservation and recirculation.
Radical Modernisms: Retracing Arab and North African Film Histories (Part 1): A film screening and panel discussion based on Peter Limbrick’s recent book on the films of Moumen Smihi and on Arab and North African cinema within a modernist frame. Smihi’s films are remarkable for the way that they emerge from and reflect on contemporary Moroccan realities within a practice that is also rooted in broader cultural dialogues across the Arab world and with international cinema more generally. Smihi’s first film Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance, 1971), was made in Paris shortly after he graduated from IDHEC. An investigation of the life of migrant workers in France, the film established him as an important voice in North African cinema. His later feature A Muslim Childhood (2015), the first in what has become a kind of semi-autobiographical trilogy for Smihi, offers a tapestry of fifties Tangier—an international zone marked by the influence of Arab, Amazigh, European, and American histories. Together with these films, the program includes Mohammad Malas's film Dreams of the City (Ahlam al-Madina) (1984), a film that develops a complex history of Syria in the 1950s in light of the many traumas of the period, all in a mode with which Smihi’s own films are in sustained conversation.
Film screening
Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance) Moumen Smihi, France, 1971, 17 min
A Muslim Childhood (El Ayel/Le gosse de Tanger) Moumen Smihi, Morocco, 2005, 83 min
Dreams of the City (Ahlam al-Madina) Mohammad Malas, Syria, 1984, 120 min
Discussion Arab Modernism as World Cinema: Moumen Smihi and Peter Limbrick in conversation with Tarek Elhaik
This program is co-sponsored by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa at UC Santa Cruz
Radical Modernisms: Retracing Arab and North African Film Histories was presented as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance)
Shot in Paris after Smihi completed film school, Si Moh is an investigation of the life of migrant workers in France. Connected to the Maghreb by postcards and to his fellow migrants by shared experiences of alienation, the character Simoh negotiates the industrialized suburbs of Paris as the subject of his intimate camera. Smihi’s arresting images and musique concrète soundtrack (by the sound artist Gerard Delassus) create an experimental and modernist intervention into the city, putting the film in dialogue with other “city symphony” films and linking it to the experiments of other Maghribi artists like Ahmed Bouanani (Six and Twelve) and Djouhra Abouda (Ali in Wonderland), both screening in Program 2.
About the filmmaker:
Born in 1945 in Tangier, Morocco, Moumen Smihi attended film school at the influential IDHEC (L’institut des hautes études cinématographiques) in Paris from 1965 to 1969). Deeply influenced by the revolutionary ideas of 1968 Paris and driven by a desire to interweave this social and political consciousness with his experience of the Maghreb, Smihi began his career with the short film Si Moh, pas de chance/Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (1971) and returned to Morocco for his much-acclaimed first feature, El Chergui, ou, le silence violent/The East Wind (1975). Ever since, he has continued to address contemporary Moroccan realities such as colonial histories, political censorship, religion, and ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity. Smihi's groundbreaking work, pursued over a long and prolific career, includes documentaries, shorts, and feature-length work made in Morocco, Egypt, and France, as well as five volumes of writing comprising critical interviews, articles on Arab, European, and Hollywood cinemas, and essays on film theory.
- Year1971
- Runtime16 minutes
- LanguageFrench, Moroccan Arabic
- CountryFrance
- DirectorMoumen Smihi
- ProducerG.R.E.C. (Groupe de Recherches et d'Essais Cinématographiques), CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) français
- Executive ProducerMoumen
- CastAbdeslam Sakini
- CinematographerColin Mounier
- EditorClaude Farny
- ComposerGérard Delassus
- Sound DesignGérard Delassus
RADICAL MODERNISMS: RETRACING ARAB AND NORTH AFRICAN FILM HISTORIES is a two-part program curated by Peter Limbrick, Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz and author of Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi.
This program addresses aesthetic and cultural experiments that emerged in Arab and North African cinema from the 1960s, experiments that showed filmmakers and artists responding to histories of colonialism and the challenges of the present. Drawing on local vernaculars and international influences alike, these filmmakers created radical forms that deserve continued attention and discussion as well as urgent efforts of preservation and recirculation.
Radical Modernisms: Retracing Arab and North African Film Histories (Part 1): A film screening and panel discussion based on Peter Limbrick’s recent book on the films of Moumen Smihi and on Arab and North African cinema within a modernist frame. Smihi’s films are remarkable for the way that they emerge from and reflect on contemporary Moroccan realities within a practice that is also rooted in broader cultural dialogues across the Arab world and with international cinema more generally. Smihi’s first film Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance, 1971), was made in Paris shortly after he graduated from IDHEC. An investigation of the life of migrant workers in France, the film established him as an important voice in North African cinema. His later feature A Muslim Childhood (2015), the first in what has become a kind of semi-autobiographical trilogy for Smihi, offers a tapestry of fifties Tangier—an international zone marked by the influence of Arab, Amazigh, European, and American histories. Together with these films, the program includes Mohammad Malas's film Dreams of the City (Ahlam al-Madina) (1984), a film that develops a complex history of Syria in the 1950s in light of the many traumas of the period, all in a mode with which Smihi’s own films are in sustained conversation.
Film screening
Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance) Moumen Smihi, France, 1971, 17 min
A Muslim Childhood (El Ayel/Le gosse de Tanger) Moumen Smihi, Morocco, 2005, 83 min
Dreams of the City (Ahlam al-Madina) Mohammad Malas, Syria, 1984, 120 min
Discussion Arab Modernism as World Cinema: Moumen Smihi and Peter Limbrick in conversation with Tarek Elhaik
This program is co-sponsored by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa at UC Santa Cruz
Radical Modernisms: Retracing Arab and North African Film Histories was presented as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance)
Shot in Paris after Smihi completed film school, Si Moh is an investigation of the life of migrant workers in France. Connected to the Maghreb by postcards and to his fellow migrants by shared experiences of alienation, the character Simoh negotiates the industrialized suburbs of Paris as the subject of his intimate camera. Smihi’s arresting images and musique concrète soundtrack (by the sound artist Gerard Delassus) create an experimental and modernist intervention into the city, putting the film in dialogue with other “city symphony” films and linking it to the experiments of other Maghribi artists like Ahmed Bouanani (Six and Twelve) and Djouhra Abouda (Ali in Wonderland), both screening in Program 2.
About the filmmaker:
Born in 1945 in Tangier, Morocco, Moumen Smihi attended film school at the influential IDHEC (L’institut des hautes études cinématographiques) in Paris from 1965 to 1969). Deeply influenced by the revolutionary ideas of 1968 Paris and driven by a desire to interweave this social and political consciousness with his experience of the Maghreb, Smihi began his career with the short film Si Moh, pas de chance/Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (1971) and returned to Morocco for his much-acclaimed first feature, El Chergui, ou, le silence violent/The East Wind (1975). Ever since, he has continued to address contemporary Moroccan realities such as colonial histories, political censorship, religion, and ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity. Smihi's groundbreaking work, pursued over a long and prolific career, includes documentaries, shorts, and feature-length work made in Morocco, Egypt, and France, as well as five volumes of writing comprising critical interviews, articles on Arab, European, and Hollywood cinemas, and essays on film theory.
- Year1971
- Runtime16 minutes
- LanguageFrench, Moroccan Arabic
- CountryFrance
- DirectorMoumen Smihi
- ProducerG.R.E.C. (Groupe de Recherches et d'Essais Cinématographiques), CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) français
- Executive ProducerMoumen
- CastAbdeslam Sakini
- CinematographerColin Mounier
- EditorClaude Farny
- ComposerGérard Delassus
- Sound DesignGérard Delassus