Narration in Motion

Écran Colonial (Colonial Screen) is a documentary by Salim Aggar that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the visual history of French colonization in Algeria: propaganda through imagery. The result of three years of archival research, the film explores the operations of the Service Cinématographique des Armées (SCA—Military Film Service) and the Service de Diffusion Cinématographique (SDC—Film Distribution Service) during the period spanning from the 1940s until independence in 1962. Salim Aggar reveals how the colonial authorities used "cinema trucks" to screen films outdoors in the heart of Algerian villages—a tactic designed to manipulate public opinion, glorify the empire, and distort social and political realities, particularly following the outbreak of the War of National Liberation. Ultimately, however, this attempt at mass indoctrination proved a failure, as the Algerians turned this media weapon against its creators to assert their own narrative of liberation.

Zineb Sedira pays tribute to the history of African Cinema and the filmmakers who had inspired her.

A four-screen video projection exploring three old lighthouses and their keepers.

Part of Zineb Sedira's art installation for the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. A piece where Sedira explores her passion for the militant cinema of the 60s and 70s.

The film recounts in three parts by three different directors the Algerian people's struggle for independence after 130 years of French colonization: Ahmed Bedjaoui "Les Fedayines," Rabah Laradji "La Bombe," Sid Ali Mazif "Le Messager."

The story of the film revolves around the epic of Sheikh Bouamama, a leader of the national resistance in Algeria during the French colonial era. The events are taking place in southwestern Algeria. The film also tells about different stages of the resistance, especially about one of the uprisings of the Algerian people, namely "the battle of the sons of Sidi Sheikh Bouamama", in which French General Leuti was appointed to try to suppress and end this resistance.

Two travelers, Boualem and Sekfali, cross the hostile and endless desert. Boualem pulls a cart on which old books, pictures, relics and memories of Sekfali are piled up. Two men, two attitudes towards life, two visions of the world. Where do they come from, where are they going? The journey would be completely calm and happy if each of them were not inhabited by their pasts, determining their different visions of the future. Boualem's childhood was marked by the Algerian war of liberation. His dream is to achieve a socialist society, which is for him the only path to salvation. Sekfali, who tries to dissuade Boualem from continuing the journey, has the attitude of an aristocrat. For him, socialism is a heresy and people do not like responsibility, they only act if a leader gives them the injunction.

The young Amar, father of two children, lives on expedients and looks in vain for a job in Algiers. He decides to emigrate to France, and finds a job there, but quickly loses it after a roundup and custody for several days. Led by two shady Europeans he met in a café, he embarks with other unemployed people for well-paid work on the plantations of Madagascar. The boat that takes them finally docks in Algiers! This film had disappeared for almost fifty years. Ahmed Bedjaoui mourned it until the Berlin Cinematheque found the only copy of this work in its archives, restored it, subtitled it and screened it at the opening of its festival in 2015. The film was thrilled the large audience present, made up of professionals and knowledgeable film buffs. Due to the modesty of its self-produced means, but also by aesthetic choice, the film oscillates between neo-realist cinema and cinema vérité.

The video shows the artist almost obsessively writing an autobiographical text in French onto her own hand, until the repeated overlays of words come to resemble a mysterious, intricate, Arabesque pattern. The process of writing functions as a mark of identity, a determination to write her own subjective experience into representational narratives, to inscribe her own fiction of identity. [Overview courtesy of Lux Online]

"One sees a close-up shot of a glass being filled with water. Bubbles are formed but slowly the water regains its still quality. The glass then acts as a deformative device between the viewer and the artist, as a hand is writing "don't do to her what you did to me" on the back of the photographs. Everything is still again for a short while until, slowly and majestically, a flush of black ink flows downwards, staining the water... The ink preludes the more dramatic fate of the repeated haunting images, the deceased woman. One hears a metallic sound as the photographs move in a more frenetic spin. One is aware of the glass again, of the limited space where a struggle takes place between a probable spoon and the photographs which dematerialise under one's eyes. The sheer immediacy of the destruction process is intensified as the image dissolves into an organic paste. Then, a woman, the artist, drinks the solution, the last ironic phase of the talisman." -S.Z