CinemaEast Film Detail:
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Memories of October 17 (Mémoires du 17 Octobre), by Faiza Guene and Bernard Richard. France, 2002, 17 minutes Screening formats available: DVCam and DVD
Synopsis:
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.
Filmmaker’s Biography:
Faiza Guene was born in France to Algerian parents and grew up in the housing project of Courtillières, where she still lives. After the huge success of her first novel, Just Like Tomorrow, she was offered a position by the government as a spokesperson on positive discrimination. She turned it down. It was, she says, “totally opposed to all the republican values I grew up with and which I adhere to. Society has always asked me to assert my French nationality, which I’ve done, and now I’m told to ‘integrate’. I don’t get it. I was born here, so it goes without saying that I’m integrated.”
She is a member of Les Engraineurs, a young people’s filmmaking association in Courtillières. Her other short films include La Zonzonnière (1999), about a girl imprisoned by her father, and RTT: Réduction du Temps de Travail (2002), about the reduced working week.
Credits:
Producers: Jerome Polidor, Association les Engraineurs
Cinematographers: Jerome Polidor, Yoan de Montgrand
Editors: Bernard Richard, Faiza Guene, Jean-Luc Einaudi
Screening fee: $75
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