Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema. Terri Ginsberg
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the cyclical and intertwined histories of America, France, Italy, and Palestine.
AMAZIGH FILMS (BERBER FILMS)
The term Amazigh (plural Imazighen) is increasingly used in place of Berber—a term derived from the Greek word for barbarian—to describe North Africans who are the ancestors of the population living in the region prior to the Arab advance following the death of Mohammed, beginning in 649. The Amazigh people speak a variety of closely related languages of which one, Tamazight, is sometimes applied to the totality of Berber languages. The Moroccan government repressed most expressions of Amazigh culture during the 1970s and 1980s by arresting activists, raiding cultural centers, and forbidding cultural production in Tamazight, with the exception of folklore. The repression was lifted during the mid-1990s, when Amazigh video features began to appear. Since then, Amazigh films on video have been produced privately in greater number, although they did not receive support from the Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM) until the mid-2000s; an example is Tamazight Oufella (Mohamed Mernich, 2008). By this time, the features of Narjiss Nejjar had begun to appear, starting with Cry No More (2003), funded by the CCM, concerning a group of Amazigh prostitutes—at the time, the first Moroccan film to have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years—which remains a relatively well-known depiction of the community. Nejjar’s subsequent Rif Lover (2010) and Mohamed Amin Benamraoui’s Sellam et Dimitan (2008) and Adiós Carmen (2013) are also set in the Rif region in the north of Morocco and use Amazigh languages in addition to Arabic. (The Hirak Rif movement there has been restive during the second half of the 2010s, following the killing of Mohcine Fikri, a fishmonger, in October 2016.)
Amazigh filmmaking in Morocco also occurs in the southern region of the country, Tachelhit. Initially, such Amazigh films concentrated on the production of music videos; only later did fictional features emerge that would support Amazigh cultural development in the country, not least by filling the void left by cinema and television. Most of these films contain rural settings, although several concern urban Amazigh communities, mixing professional with amateur performers and telling stories about Amazigh life or mythology. Numerous well-known Amazigh singers have been featured in these early films—an outgrowth of the prior music videos. Drama and humor are their predominant genres, with most narratives set in modern times; however, several period pieces have also been produced. Amazigh videos are sold throughout Morocco and in Europe, to accommodate the large number of migrating Tamazight speakers, a trend supported by the acknowledgment of the Amazigh language as an official one, alongside Arabic, in Morocco in 2016, opening various mechanisms of funding to Berber-language productions.
Amazigh filmmaking is by no means confined to Morocco. Assia Djebar, born in the Amazigh city of Chenoua on the north coast of Algeria, claimed regret that she was not brought up to speak a Berber language. Her two films, The “Nouba” of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1978) and La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli (1982), are, however, rooted in the musical and cultural traditions of the region. The term nouba refers to a “turn,” to poets or musicians awaiting their time to perform; while the zerda is a traditional celebration. The Kabyle artists of Algeria (who also inhabit parts of Morocco) have played a significant role in promoting Amazigh culture across the region, often with French support. The National Amazigh Film Festival, held annually in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, since 1999, showcases feature films and shorts as part of a wider effort to highlight linguistic and cultural diversity within the Amazigh communities across the Maghreb that were marginalized under French colonialism’s, and the newly independent Maghrebi governments’, preference for Arabic language and culture. By the same token, the attenuated distinction between Amazigh and Arab cultures (especially in Algeria), originally a product of a colonialism that exploited such differences for political gain, is still evident in ongoing social struggles for Amazigh cultural rights, including those surrounding cinematic production. This is especially evident in controversies surrounding the establishment in Algeria of the Institut Royal du Cinématographique Amazigh, a government agency that has been accused by Amazigh filmmakers of being overly regulated and hence censorial of Amazigh cultural representation. The Amazigh language was officially recognized in Algeria in 2011. See also BACCAR, SELMA (1945–); BOUHMOUCH, NADIR (1990‒); NACIRI, SAÏD (1960–).
AMEUR-ZAÏMÈCHE, RABAH (1966–)
Of Algerian origin, beur filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmèche has lived in France since 1968, where his own life struggles have been his main source of inspiration. In his first directorial feature, Wesh Wesh, What’s Happening? (2001), Ameur-Zaïmèche also stars as Kamel, a young Maghrebi who returns home to the impoverished Paris suburbs (banlieues) after an absence of seven years, having spent five in a French prison and two deported to his native Algeria (under a 1993 French law, Franco-Maghrebis may be denied citizenship if they are sentenced to more than six months in jail). Although he tries to reestablish his life in France, he is impeded at every turn by his illegal status and the French police who harass him and his delinquent brother, Mousse, a drug dealer, notwithstanding assistance from his well-intentioned French Communist girlfriend, a local schoolteacher. Following a raid in which the police spray his mother with mace, Kamel kills one of the officers and steals his gun; the film concludes ambiguously, as the police chase Kamel into a forest from which the distant sound of two gunshots marks the film’s final moment. In his subsequent Bled Number One (aka Back Home) (2005), Ameur-Zaïmèche plays a former prisoner expelled from France to Algeria, a country now viewed from a Europeanized perspective and with a sense of cultural shock. The film raises questions about humanity and transnational migratory flows in an unobtrusive, semidocumentary style. Dernier maquis (Final Resistance) (2008) is a factory-set film of considerable visual beauty that raises issues of Islamic identity in the beur community.
Moving away from personal evocations of the lives of second-generation North Africans in such banlieue films, Ameur-Zaïmeche has more recently explored ambivalent or scorned figures from popular and religious mythologies, in period costume films that combine adventure, drama, thriller, and biography. To do this, he has largely relied on actors of Maghrebi descent acting out roles performed differently from the naturalistic style associated with the second-generation Maghrebi—or beur—characters they have typically portrayed. Smugglers’ Songs (2011) is centered on the legacy of Mandrin, an 18th-century French highwayman, and the ways his fellow smugglers operated under the noses of the royal guards in order to maintain his legacy, as well as organized the publication of his biography. The Story of Judas (2015) explores the progressive changes in Judas (played by Ameur-Zaïmeche) prior to his betrayal of Jesus (Nabil Djedouani), while Terminal Sud (2019), set in an unnamed country under an oppressive regime, depicts a doctor (Ramzi Bedia) who seeks to save lives but becomes trapped by a seemingly omniscient power.
AMIN, MERVAT (1946–)
Born in Minya, Egypt, Amin came to fame playing opposite Abdel Halim Hafez in the phenomenally successful My Father Is Up the Tree (Hussein Kamal, 1969). She was part of a new generation of stars that also included Nur El-Sherif, Mahmud Yassin, and Hussein Fahmy, to the last of whom she was married from 1974 to 1986. Amin was a major presence in Egyptian cinema throughout the 1970s and 1980s and has made occasional appearances since. Among her most notable films are Adrift on the Nile (Kamal, 1971); the seminal New Realist work The Bus Driver (Atef El-Tayeb, 1982); Wife of an Important Man (Mohamed Khan, 1987), with Ahmed Zaki; and the film that marked Omar Sharif’s return to Egypt, The Puppeteer (Hani Lashin, 1989).
AMIRALAY, OMAR (1944–2011)
The progenitor of modern Syrian documentary filmmaking, Amiralay was born in Damascus to an Ottoman military officer and a Lebanese woman. During the 1960s, he studied in Paris, first painting and drama at the Théâtre des Nations, then cinema at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques. The