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.
Retracing Arab and North African Film Histories (Part 2): The films included in the package are rare and vital treasures of Moroccan and diasporic Maghrebi filmmaking. We are proud to present the US premiere of the recently restored Ali in Wonderland (1976), a stunning film about Maghrebi migration and life in France that resonates with Moumen Smihi’s earlier film on this topic in Part One of our program. Also included are two rarely-seen films by the Moroccan filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani and his collaborators: the recently restored “city symphony” film Six and Twelve (1968) and the radical archival essay film Memory 14 (1971) which turns to the French colonial archive to create a searing and poetic essay on Moroccan history. The program also includes another recent restoration: the feature film About Some Meaningless Events (1974), directed by Mostafa Derkaoui, which is recirculating decades after it was first banned in Morocco. Together these films offer audiences an exciting exploration of the fragile and often overlooked cinematic legacy of Morocco and the Maghreb.
Livestream Panel Discussion: October 24 at 3 pm EDT
Cinematic Archives, Preservation, and Circulation in the Maghreb.
The screening will be accompanied by a live stream panel discussion addressing the question of archives and the urgent demands of preservation and recirculation of work that is at risk of disappearance.
Film Screening: October 21-24:
Six and Twelve (Six et Douze), Ahmed Bouanani, Mohammed A. Tazi, Abdelmajid Rechiche, Morocco, 1968, 18 min
Memory 14 (Mémoire 14), Ahmed Bouanani, Morocco, 1968, 24 min
About Some Meaningless Events (De quelques évènements sans signification), Mostafa Derkaoui, Morocco, 1974, 76 min
Also included for a limited period of 6 hours on October 23 starting at 12pm EDT:
Ali in Wonderland (Ali au pays des merveilles), Djouhra Abouda et Alain Bonnamy, France, 1976, 59 min US PREMIERE ! To access the film Register HERE
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 is presented as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
Cinematic Archives, Preservation, and Circulation in the Maghreb
Livestream Panel Discussion: October 24 at 3 pm EDT
This panel discussion will address the question of archives—ArteEast’s archive and the fragile cinematic archives of Arab and North African cinema—and the urgent demands of preservation and recirculation of work that is at risk of disappearance. Limbrick will speak with Léa Morin, an independent curator and researcher based in Morocco and France, about her work restoring the film Ali in Wonderland (1 976) and other North African films; and with Touda Bouanani, video artist and archivist based in Rabat, Morocco, on recovering the legacy of her father Ahmed Bouanani’s cinema and writing. Touda Bouanani’s work has involved creative forms of visual documentation and preservation, as well as the re-editing and publication of Ahmed Bouanani’s landmark history of Moroccan cinema, La septième porte (The Seventh Gate). They’ll be joined by Sido Lansari (Cinémathèque de Tanger) who will discuss this important institution in the cinematic life of Morocco and its work of screening and archiving.
Panelists:
Peter Limbrick:
Peter Limbrick is Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of two books: Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi (University of California Press, 2020) and Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (Palgrave, 2010). In addition, he has published articles on Arab cinema, postcolonial and transnational film and video, and queer theory. He has also curated several film and video programs, including a retrospective of the work of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, which traveled to the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA, USA), the Block Cinema (Chicago, USA) and Tate Modern (London, UK).
Léa Morin :
Léa Morin is an independent curator and researcher. She is co-founder of l’Observatoire (Art et Recherche) in Casablanca. She is engaged in projects of editing, exhibition, and restoration) that bring together researchers, artists and practitioners. Her research attempts to contribute to a better knowledge of artistic and especially cinematic modernities that have been rendered invisible by dominant narratives. She is especially interested in the circulation of ideas, forms, aesthetics, and political and artistic struggles in the period of independence movements (1960s and 1970s) and in the stakes of cultural decolonization. She is one of the directors of Talitha, nonprofit organization devoted to alternative and experimental cinematic and sound archives, preservation, and redistribution.
Touda Bouanani:
Touda Bouanani graduated from Ecole des Beaux Arts of Bordeaux in 1994. Through a singular approach and dedication to the literary and cinematographic work of her father, the artist Ahmed Bouanani, she explores photography, drawing, re-drawing, to re-creates and re-assembles a family universe where history meets fiction.
Sido Mohamed Lansari
Sido works as the director and head of programming of Cinémathèque de Tanger, North Africa’s first art house cinema and film archive, since 2019. He holds a Master’s degree in marketing and cultural management. In 2011, he joined the Contemporary Arts Biennale and Dance Biennale in Lyon team for two years. In 2020, he founded Divine, an online fanzine dedicated to arts and freedom of speech during the Covid19 lockdown. Sido is also a visual artist and an award-winning filmmaker. He is a member of NAAS – Network of Arab Alternative Screens.
Cinémathèque de Tanger is a non-profit association created in 2006 and based in Tangier, Morocco. It is committed to the promotion of world cinema in Morocco, and Moroccan cinema in the world. It offers a collection of documentary films, feature films, experimental films, and artists’ videos, proposing educational activities and creating a platform for dialogue and encounters catered towards cinema professionals.
Cinematic Archives, Preservation, and Circulation in the Maghreb is presented as part of Alternative Archives, a series of programs that explore themes of storytelling, archiving and evolving technologies in the digital world as they relate to the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region. Alternative Archives is presented in partnership with the Arab American National Musuem, NYU’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, Honolulu Museum of Art. 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 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.
Retracing Arab and North African Film Histories (Part 2): The films included in the package are rare and vital treasures of Moroccan and diasporic Maghrebi filmmaking. We are proud to present the US premiere of the recently restored Ali in Wonderland (1976), a stunning film about Maghrebi migration and life in France that resonates with Moumen Smihi’s earlier film on this topic in Part One of our program. Also included are two rarely-seen films by the Moroccan filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani and his collaborators: the recently restored “city symphony” film Six and Twelve (1968) and the radical archival essay film Memory 14 (1971) which turns to the French colonial archive to create a searing and poetic essay on Moroccan history. The program also includes another recent restoration: the feature film About Some Meaningless Events (1974), directed by Mostafa Derkaoui, which is recirculating decades after it was first banned in Morocco. Together these films offer audiences an exciting exploration of the fragile and often overlooked cinematic legacy of Morocco and the Maghreb.
Livestream Panel Discussion: October 24 at 3 pm EDT
Cinematic Archives, Preservation, and Circulation in the Maghreb.
The screening will be accompanied by a live stream panel discussion addressing the question of archives and the urgent demands of preservation and recirculation of work that is at risk of disappearance.
Film Screening: October 21-24:
Six and Twelve (Six et Douze), Ahmed Bouanani, Mohammed A. Tazi, Abdelmajid Rechiche, Morocco, 1968, 18 min
Memory 14 (Mémoire 14), Ahmed Bouanani, Morocco, 1968, 24 min
About Some Meaningless Events (De quelques évènements sans signification), Mostafa Derkaoui, Morocco, 1974, 76 min
Also included for a limited period of 6 hours on October 23 starting at 12pm EDT:
Ali in Wonderland (Ali au pays des merveilles), Djouhra Abouda et Alain Bonnamy, France, 1976, 59 min US PREMIERE ! To access the film Register HERE
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 is presented as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
Cinematic Archives, Preservation, and Circulation in the Maghreb
Livestream Panel Discussion: October 24 at 3 pm EDT
This panel discussion will address the question of archives—ArteEast’s archive and the fragile cinematic archives of Arab and North African cinema—and the urgent demands of preservation and recirculation of work that is at risk of disappearance. Limbrick will speak with Léa Morin, an independent curator and researcher based in Morocco and France, about her work restoring the film Ali in Wonderland (1 976) and other North African films; and with Touda Bouanani, video artist and archivist based in Rabat, Morocco, on recovering the legacy of her father Ahmed Bouanani’s cinema and writing. Touda Bouanani’s work has involved creative forms of visual documentation and preservation, as well as the re-editing and publication of Ahmed Bouanani’s landmark history of Moroccan cinema, La septième porte (The Seventh Gate). They’ll be joined by Sido Lansari (Cinémathèque de Tanger) who will discuss this important institution in the cinematic life of Morocco and its work of screening and archiving.
Panelists:
Peter Limbrick:
Peter Limbrick is Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of two books: Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi (University of California Press, 2020) and Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (Palgrave, 2010). In addition, he has published articles on Arab cinema, postcolonial and transnational film and video, and queer theory. He has also curated several film and video programs, including a retrospective of the work of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, which traveled to the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA, USA), the Block Cinema (Chicago, USA) and Tate Modern (London, UK).
Léa Morin :
Léa Morin is an independent curator and researcher. She is co-founder of l’Observatoire (Art et Recherche) in Casablanca. She is engaged in projects of editing, exhibition, and restoration) that bring together researchers, artists and practitioners. Her research attempts to contribute to a better knowledge of artistic and especially cinematic modernities that have been rendered invisible by dominant narratives. She is especially interested in the circulation of ideas, forms, aesthetics, and political and artistic struggles in the period of independence movements (1960s and 1970s) and in the stakes of cultural decolonization. She is one of the directors of Talitha, nonprofit organization devoted to alternative and experimental cinematic and sound archives, preservation, and redistribution.
Touda Bouanani:
Touda Bouanani graduated from Ecole des Beaux Arts of Bordeaux in 1994. Through a singular approach and dedication to the literary and cinematographic work of her father, the artist Ahmed Bouanani, she explores photography, drawing, re-drawing, to re-creates and re-assembles a family universe where history meets fiction.
Sido Mohamed Lansari
Sido works as the director and head of programming of Cinémathèque de Tanger, North Africa’s first art house cinema and film archive, since 2019. He holds a Master’s degree in marketing and cultural management. In 2011, he joined the Contemporary Arts Biennale and Dance Biennale in Lyon team for two years. In 2020, he founded Divine, an online fanzine dedicated to arts and freedom of speech during the Covid19 lockdown. Sido is also a visual artist and an award-winning filmmaker. He is a member of NAAS – Network of Arab Alternative Screens.
Cinémathèque de Tanger is a non-profit association created in 2006 and based in Tangier, Morocco. It is committed to the promotion of world cinema in Morocco, and Moroccan cinema in the world. It offers a collection of documentary films, feature films, experimental films, and artists’ videos, proposing educational activities and creating a platform for dialogue and encounters catered towards cinema professionals.
Cinematic Archives, Preservation, and Circulation in the Maghreb is presented as part of Alternative Archives, a series of programs that explore themes of storytelling, archiving and evolving technologies in the digital world as they relate to the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region. Alternative Archives is presented in partnership with the Arab American National Musuem, NYU’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, Honolulu Museum of Art. This program is co-sponsored by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa at UC Santa Cruz