This year's festival includes two recently restored Moroccan classics from the 1970s: Ahmed Maanouni's Trances (available in-person only) and Mostafa Derkaoui's About Some Meaningless Events (available virtually and in-person as part of TCAFF 2021). Mizna's festival also includes the incredible documentary by Ali Essafi, which puts Moroccan art, music, and film from the '70s on display, engaging with the significance and potential of this historical moment. In this discussion, author and curator Omar Berrada and filmmakers Ahmed Maanouni and Ali Essafi reflect on the significance of Moroccan film in the 1970s and on the importance of film restoration in the present.
About the panelists
Omar Berrada is a writer, translator, and curator. He is the author of Clonal Hum, a book of poems on “invasive species,” and the editor or co-editor of several books, including Album: Cinémathèque de Tanger, a multilingual volume about film in Tangier and Tangier on film (2012); The Africans, a book on racial dynamics in Morocco (2016); and La Septième Porte, Ahmed Bouanani’s posthumous history of Moroccan cinema (2020). His writing has been published in numerous exhibition catalogs, essay collections, and anthologies, including Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry (2020). He currently lives in New York, where he teaches at The Cooper Union.
Ahmed El Maanouni is a writer, director, cinematographer, and producer born in Casablanca. His works include one of the most emblematic titles of Moroccan cinema, Alyam Alyam (1978), the first Moroccan film to be selected in Cannes Film Festival and Grand Prize winner at Mannheim film festival. He caught international attention with Trances (Al Hal), presented by Martin Scorsese at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival—Cannes Classics. Alyam Alyam and Trances were both restored by The Cinema Foundation Project and have been included in prestigious collections, such as The Criterion Collection and Eureka, The Masters of Cinema. His film Burned Hearts (2007) was the Grand Prix winner at the National Film Festival in Morocco, and it was awarded numerous international prizes. In 2007, he was also honored with the title of Officier of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France.
Ali Essafi was born in Morocco, and he studied psychology in France before he entered the world of filmmaking. His works as a director include General, Here We Are, The Silence of the Beet Fields, Ouarzazate Movie, and Shikhat’s Blues, all of which have been widely screened on the international film festival circuit. When he returned to Morocco, he embarked on a lengthy research project, examining the history and aesthetics of North African film and visual archives. He transformed his research into films and installations. His film Crossing the Seventh Gate (2017) is a portrait of Ahmed Bouanani, the late Moroccan filmmaker; the film premiered at the Berlinale (Forum) in 2017. His most recent film, Before the Dying of the Light, screening as part of TCAFF 2021, premiered at IDFA in Amsterdam in 2020.
This year's festival includes two recently restored Moroccan classics from the 1970s: Ahmed Maanouni's Trances (available in-person only) and Mostafa Derkaoui's About Some Meaningless Events (available virtually and in-person as part of TCAFF 2021). Mizna's festival also includes the incredible documentary by Ali Essafi, which puts Moroccan art, music, and film from the '70s on display, engaging with the significance and potential of this historical moment. In this discussion, author and curator Omar Berrada and filmmakers Ahmed Maanouni and Ali Essafi reflect on the significance of Moroccan film in the 1970s and on the importance of film restoration in the present.
About the panelists
Omar Berrada is a writer, translator, and curator. He is the author of Clonal Hum, a book of poems on “invasive species,” and the editor or co-editor of several books, including Album: Cinémathèque de Tanger, a multilingual volume about film in Tangier and Tangier on film (2012); The Africans, a book on racial dynamics in Morocco (2016); and La Septième Porte, Ahmed Bouanani’s posthumous history of Moroccan cinema (2020). His writing has been published in numerous exhibition catalogs, essay collections, and anthologies, including Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry (2020). He currently lives in New York, where he teaches at The Cooper Union.
Ahmed El Maanouni is a writer, director, cinematographer, and producer born in Casablanca. His works include one of the most emblematic titles of Moroccan cinema, Alyam Alyam (1978), the first Moroccan film to be selected in Cannes Film Festival and Grand Prize winner at Mannheim film festival. He caught international attention with Trances (Al Hal), presented by Martin Scorsese at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival—Cannes Classics. Alyam Alyam and Trances were both restored by The Cinema Foundation Project and have been included in prestigious collections, such as The Criterion Collection and Eureka, The Masters of Cinema. His film Burned Hearts (2007) was the Grand Prix winner at the National Film Festival in Morocco, and it was awarded numerous international prizes. In 2007, he was also honored with the title of Officier of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France.
Ali Essafi was born in Morocco, and he studied psychology in France before he entered the world of filmmaking. His works as a director include General, Here We Are, The Silence of the Beet Fields, Ouarzazate Movie, and Shikhat’s Blues, all of which have been widely screened on the international film festival circuit. When he returned to Morocco, he embarked on a lengthy research project, examining the history and aesthetics of North African film and visual archives. He transformed his research into films and installations. His film Crossing the Seventh Gate (2017) is a portrait of Ahmed Bouanani, the late Moroccan filmmaker; the film premiered at the Berlinale (Forum) in 2017. His most recent film, Before the Dying of the Light, screening as part of TCAFF 2021, premiered at IDFA in Amsterdam in 2020.