The spring 2022 season of the Mizna Film Series highlights recently restored works by Algerian filmmakers in diaspora. Curated by Mizna’s Film Programming Coordinator Ahmed Abdulmageed, the two-month segment presents films produced during the global leftist movements in the 1970s. This selection celebrates Algerian filmmakers Farouk Beloufa, Djouhra Abouda, and Alain Bonnamy, who captured the political complexities of the moment, as well as the rhythmic and aesthetic make-up of their diasporas, by breaking away from traditional filmic forms.

The films produced by Djouhra Abouda and Alain Bonnamy pushed the purely formal boundaries of experimental cinema in a combination of avant-garde aesthetics and political activism. Working in the cinema department of the Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes in Paris, Abouda and Bonnamy made two experimental short films Algérie Couleurs (1972) and Ciné-Cité (1974) and a feature film, Ali au pays des merveilles (1976). All three films were recently restored and digitized through the efforts of Image Retrouvée, the Talitha Association, and Léa Morin.

Born in Algeria in 1949, Djouhra Abouda arrived in France with her family in 1956. She founded the feminist protest band Djurdjura in the late 1970s and began to pursue a solo music career in 2002. Alain Bonnamy, born in 1947, is an architect and photographer.