Cinema Film Detail:
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Bled Number 1, by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche. Algeria/France, 2006, 100 minutes 
Screening formats available: 35 mm and DVD
Synopsis:
A follow-up to his well-regarded debut "Wesh-Wesh", Bled Number One is a slice-of-life film that speaks volumes about the conditions of life in today’s Algeria. Kamel is deported from France back to his native Algeria after being released from prison. There he finds that beneath the veneer of tranquil and bucolic village life lays an intense struggle between many forces – religion, secularism, modernity, and notions of tradition and honor. He watches as these conflicts mar the lives of the townsfolk around him. Kamel's cousin Louisa, who has taken her young son and left her husband, is violently received when she returns home to her mother and brother. A gang of young men, claiming to be acting in the name of religion, harass those who they deem to be offending it. With this tempestuous backdrop, Kamel must decide whether his birthplace is really is home.
Filmmaker’s Biography:
A long-time lover of cinema, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche decided in 2001, armed with a small DV camcorder, to direct Wesh, Wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? with a few friends, a film on a sensitive subject: the difficult re-insertion into the working world of a former delinquent. The young director took as a frame for his story the Cité des Bosquets in Seine-Saint Denis, a place that he has known well since childhood. This first shot took the Léo Sheer prize urging its distribution at the International Festival of Film de Belfort in 2001. In 2005, he signed his second production, Bled number one, in which he plays a former prisoner expelled from his country of origin, Algeria, a country that he reveals through European eyes.
Credits:
Producer: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche
Writers: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Louise Thermes
Cinematography: Lionel Sautier, Hakim Si Ahmed, Olivier Smittarello
Editor: Nicolas Bancilhon
Music: Rodolphe Burger
Cast: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Meriem Serbah, Abel Jafr
Screening fee: free
Filmmaker's Biography
Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri is an independent filmmaker, born and raised in Tehran, Iran. When the revolution in Iran broke out she was compelled to stay in the US, where she received her BA from Trinity College in Hartford, Ct., and an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University. She works as producer for Link Television on the Bridge to Iran series. She produced an award-winning series about the war in Iraq for Deep Dish TV which was at the 2006 Whitney Biennial; and for Trinity TV she produced documentaries about 9/11. She teaches film studies courses at New York University. She has also worked for the award-winning PBS series POV and curated a documentary film festival in Tehran. Her personal documentaries about Iran were broadcasted on PBS and have been shown widely in museums, art houses and universities. They are: WOMEN LIKE US (2002); A PLACE CALLED HOME, (1998); FAR FROM IRAN (1990); and JOURNAL FROM TEHRAN (1987), a memoir of war days in Tehran, which was a prize winner and was screened at the Independent Focus series of PBS. Her work is distributed by Women Make Movies.
Simin Farkhondeh is an award winning filmmaker, who has been working as an independent producer, artist, educator and activist in New York, Europe and Iran. She was born in Germany and raised in Iran and went to college in the US. In 1991 she co-produced, co-directed the Gulf Crisis TV Project, an award winning series that aired on PBS, Channel Four of England and was screened at the Whitney Biennial, and the Margaret Mead Film. From 1995 to 2003. she was director of Labor at the Crossroads, a monthly TV program about work issues, which aired on cable, channel 75 in New York and other cities across the US. The program received the MNN Award. In 1999 she produced ADJUNCT AGONY, a short dramatic piece about the plight of adjunct faculty in US universities, and in 2001 she produced SALT PEANUTS a look at the effect of September 11 on airline workers, which screened at the Museum of Modern Art. Simin is a recipient of the Rockefeller Fellowship Award for Who Gives Kisses Freely From Her Lips, and co-producer, co-director of Caught Between Two Worlds. She teaches film theory and art at Hampshire College.
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