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The Zerda or the Songs of Forgetting is a multilayered, poetic essay film that recycles archival newsreels shot in the French colonies of North Africa. Out of these colonial artifacts, Assia Djebar recuperates the history of the Zerda festival—a merrymaking tradition indigenous to North Africa—suggesting that the power and mysticism of this ceremony is obliterated by the voyeurism of the colonial gaze. Submitted to the 1983 Berlin International Film Festival, the documentary won the title for Best Historical Film. The original copy has since vanished, with this sole remaining copy restored and digitized by the Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin. In French and Arabic with English and German subtitles.