Twin Cities Arab Film Festival 2023

Archives and Secrets (Shorts Segment)

Expired October 2, 2023 5:00 AM
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Archives allow us to glimpse the past, and they provide integral information for contemporary viewers and researchers to understand and convey stories that might not otherwise be available. But fragments from the past also provide rich commentary on our present, as they interrupt our view of the world, often reshaping and redefining our most deeply rooted ideas. The short films in this segment stitch together archives and secrets––in the form of documents, images, and plants––sharing both personal and collective memories from the past to reimagine the present and future.

Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, the Algerian film industry flourished in an anti-colonial environment, giving rise to a nation of politically aware film lovers. Since then, however, the film industry and archives in Algeria have suffered due to the political and economic situation. This short video work consists of several sequences of found footage from various militant films made in Algeria from the 1960s onwards. The archive material was edited for this show to create a new narrative. Some sequences are reminiscent of politically engaged action in this country that was one of the African nations where liberation movements flourished most freely. Other parts of the footage show traces of time as a result of the deterioration in the film’s chemical composition and emulsion, resulting in abstract images with granular textures.
  • Year
    2019
  • Runtime
    9 minutes
  • Country
    Algeria, France
  • Subtitle Language
    English
  • Director
    Zineb Sedira
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