Tarfaya ou la marche d’un poète
Ahmed Bouanani
Morocco, 1966, 20 min, DCP, B&W, French
Mémoire 14
Ahmed Bouanani
Morocco, 1971, 25 min, DCP, B&W, French
Visages de Marrakech
Mohamed Abouelouakar
Morocco, 1977, 35 min, DCP, colour, French
Mémoire ocre
Daoud Aoulad Syad
Morocco, 1991, 17 min, DCP, colour-B&W, Arabic-French-English
No issue was more important to Ahmed Bouanani than memory. He understood early on that the unified nationalist narrative pushed by the newly independent state was just as dangerous as the distorted image imposed by the colonizers, because it marginalized too many voices. He wanted to tell history from below, to honor the human and non-human diversity of the territory he called home. This meant relying on people’s stories. It meant valuing myths and popular legends above and beyond the academic discipline of History. Despite suspicion and censorship, he would subvert public commissions in order to make films that bear witness to a truly collective memory. In Tarfaya ou la marche d’un poète, a fictional coming-of-age scenario becomes the occasion for a lively depiction of village markets and Saharan landscapes, holy shrines and storytelling circles. Bouanani was only able to make a small number of films, but his method left a mark on many filmmakers, as this program shows.
