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BEUR IS BEAUTIFUL: MAGHREBI-FRENCH FILMMAKING Curated by Carrie Tarr as part of THE SECOND BIENNIAL CINEMAEAST FILM FESTIVAL
November 10 - 11, 2007
The term beur is French inversion-slang (verlan) for the word arabe, and refers to the French-born children of North African (Maghrebi) immigrants of Arab as well as Amazigh and Kabyle origin. For the most part, this generation grew up in the concrete wastelands of France’s low-income housing projects in the suburbs (banlieues). While beur has been part of the European lexicon for more than 20 years, the term and the culture it describes remain largely unknown in the United States.
When violent riots erupted in the banlieues of Paris and other French cities in fall 2005, questions of beur immigration and assimilation thought long buried suddenly burst back into the light, given a new urgency by post–9/11 politics that designate Middle East and West as enemies and fan the flames of nationalism and mutual intolerance. Although the story of beur cinema since its beginnings in the banlieues in the 1980s is very specific historically, socially and politically to France, its essence is animated by themes universal to all contemporary experiences of migration, and particularly apt in the current climate.
A groundbreaking film retrospective and conference on beur cinema: a burgeoning trend in French filmmaking reflecting on the legacy of colonialism and the integration of France’s populations of North African descent.
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Cheb
by Rachid Bouchareb. Algeria/France, 1991, 79 min, 35mm
Merwan, a 19-year-old beur, has been expelled from France and forced to return to Algeria, the country where he was born but where he is now an alien to the language and customs. His fellow nationals confiscate his passport and send him to the army; in the stuffy atmosphere of a desert military barracks, his fellow Algerians mercilessly remind him of his foreignness. He decides to escape this country that holds him against his will, only to return to the country that has rejected him, along the way discovering all the ironies of the myth of “homecoming.” More
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Memories of Immigration
(Mémoires d’immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin), by Yamina Benguigui. France, 1997/8, 160 min, 35mm
In this seminal documentary, a triptych of stories spells out the painful fate of two generations of Maghrebi immigration to France. First we meet the men who left North Africa to forge their way in the paradise of France, only to discover that their paradise is one built of mud and tin roofs; then, the lives of the women who fared little better when they came to join their husbands struggling in this sad poverty. Finally come the stories of the children whose identity is blurred and forgotten as the pervasive French culture absorbs their Arab heritage. More
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Dounia
by Zaida Ghorab-Volta. France, 1997, 17 min, 35mm
Dounia is the 20-year-old daughter of an Algerian couple living in France. One morning after her night shift at the hospital, she finds her father waiting at home for her. He is drunk and forbids her to go back to work, but Dounia refuses to give in... More
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Memories of October 17th
(Mémoires du 17 Octobre), by Faiza Guene and Bernard Richard. France, 2002, 17 min, DVCam
On the evening of October 17, 1961, the French police brutally repressed a peaceful demonstration supporting Algerian independence. Hundreds of Maghrebi immigrants died in police attacks, dozens were thrown into the Seine and more died in detention centers. The police, however, reported only two deaths. This powerful film unearths the painful memories of witnesses, keeping alive the memory of a massacre that French officialdom would like us to forget. More
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My Lost Home
(Ma Maison perdue), by Kamal El Mahouti. France/Morocco, 2001, 19 min, Beta SP
On the eve of the demolition of a housing project in Saint-Denis, France, Moroccan-born filmmaker Kamal El Mahouti revisits the place where he lived from the age of six. His delicate, impressionistic document probes the graffiti-covered walls, broken windows and empty stairwells of a bleak apartment block to retrieve the memories of an immigrant family, its difficulties and its rituals. More
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Tea in the Harem
(Le Thé au harem d’Archimède) by Mehdi Charef. France, 1985, 110 min, 35mm
Two adolescent young men in the suburbs of Paris, Pat and Madjid, fail to find employment after leaving school and drift into a life of petty crime, stealing and pimping when the mood takes them. Both live in a run-down housing estate and both dream of a better life, but neither is able to break free of their situation. Although not the first film to address second-generation Maghrebis in France, Tea in the Harem was the first feature to be directed by a filmmaker of Maghrebi origin; Charef earned the César for Best First Film in 1986 and inspired the term cinéma beur. Despite the grim environment of the banlieues, the film refuses to dwell on racism and violence, emphasizing instead the friendship between white and beur youths and the problems they share. More
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Off the Beaten Tracks
(Chemin de traverse), by Malika Tenfiche. France, 2000, 22 min, 35mm
Forced to accompany her Algerian mother to the country for her health, a young assimilated Frenchwoman tries to reestablish a dialogue that has long since disappeared. When the daughter massages the older woman’s body, physical intimacy transcends cultural distance. More
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Voisins Voisines
by Malik Chibane. France, 2005, 90 min, 35mm
A rapper is racing against time—he has just three days to write his lyrics; otherwise, he can say good-bye to his advance from the record company. When he finally finds inspiration right on his doorstep, in the often comic struggles of his neighbors in the Mozart Estate housing project, he sets the stage for a lively hip-hop fable, set to the beat of the banlieues. More
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Where Fig Trees Grow
(Rue des Figuiers), by Yasmina Yahiaoui. France, 2005, 82 min, 35mm
In Yasmina Yahiaoui’s congenial ensemble piece, the setting is Rue des Figuiers, a (fig-tree-less) North African neighborhood in Toulon, where women hold sway and fundamentalist puritanism is given short shrift. Djamila is a middle-aged, belly-dancing femme fatale whose long-term lover, the rakish hairdresser Marfouz, finally gives in to his family and imports a demure young bride from the Maghreb. This, needless to say, causes uproar among the street’s other inhabitants—including a no-nonsense madam, a teenage girl on the run from her own domineering mother and an eccentric grandmother, played by veteran Marthe Villalonga. Broad, boisterous and bracingly impious, Yahiaoui’s film is a provocatively upbeat broadcast from the female side of Islamic culture. Visually brisk and not a little cartoonish, Where Fig Trees Grow carries more than a dash of Pedro Almodóvar’s influence, camp lip-sync sequences included. More
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