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In terms of the so-called 'clash of civilisations' after '9/11', Islamic states such as Algeria have too often been perceived in the West as 'other' and hence as threatening. This book, via an analysis of cinema, provides a discussion on some misunderstandings and assumptions about Algeria, which remains to a large extent underrepresented or misrepresented in the UK media. It is about Algerian national cinema and illuminates the ways in which the official mythologising of a national culture at the 'centre' of the postcolonial state has marginalised the diverse identities within the nation.
Currently, Algerian cinema is starting to reconfigure itself after two decades of attrition and collapse. The nationalised film industry of the Boumediene era is long gone, but there are signs that a national film industry might be under (re)construction. Those signs are small-scale. It was taken as significant that the comedy Mascarades (Salem, 2007) was released on as many as eleven screens
thus remains the best political tool’.23 The uses of the Boumediene era as an unfavourable mirror to hold up to the here and now are revealed by the fact that it is often women closest to the centre of power today who are most uncomfortable talking about the contemporary relevance of this period. In 2005, when I interviewed Saliha Djeffal, a senior figure in the party of the FLN, I asked her what she thought of a recent decision to no longer celebrate the anniversary of the coup on 19 June as a national day: From national construction to new battles 191 Figure
population, in contrast with the more nostalgically remembered Boumediene era. The disjuncture between the Algerian people and the state reached a nadir in Black October of 1988, ‘the autumn of the six hundred dead’ (Djebar 2000 : 140). For the first time in the history of the independent Algeria the violence of the regime became undeniably explicit as the army fired on the people, with hundreds of protestors killed and many
documentary, as indeed between the certainties of cinéma moudjahid and the complexities of the new Algeria. It captures the hectic modernisation of the Boumediene era while reflecting back on the aftermath of historical trauma and providing an experimental formal example for 1970s classics such as Omar Gatlato (Allouache, 1976) and La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (Djebar, 1978). The outlaw status of the film is