Showing posts with label Arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arts. Show all posts
November 15, 2009
Marrakech Festival a boon for local cinema
The Marrakech Film Festival, to begin its ninth edition on December 4, has been a boon not just for the fledgling Moroccan/African cinema industry, offering an effective platform for their directors, but also for the city’s tourism. Funded entirely by the country’s ruling monarchy with Prince Moulay Rachid (King’s brother) presiding over the nine-day run (though the management is with a French public relations firm, Le Public Systeme.), the Festival pumps excitement into the city’s innumerable hotels and wayside eateries.
The marketplace, known as Souk, comes alive with the local cuisine spicing up the screen. Hotels go full, and the Souk looks like a mela with the Festival crowds taking a breather between movies tucking in street food or haggling over the prices of curios. For an Indian, the place is a virtual paradise for pirated DVDs of the country’s latest blockbusters that can be had for a song.
These bustling street scenes or the expansive vistas or the awesome palaces, intricately designed and decorated in Islamic style, in Morocco have played a part in cinema. They have provided fabulous locales for both Moroccan and foreign films. Ridley Scott and Oliver Stone among others have used the country to shoot their works. A part of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel is set in Morocco.
The African nation that still has an unmistakable French flavour once transcended cultural barriers, especially in times of geopolitical crisis, through Michael Curtiz’s 1942 classic, Casablanca. That it was never shot in Casablanca is another story, but Morocco has since then extensively used its Moorish art, décor hotels, winter sun and celebrity pull to carve out a niche for itself on the global movie map.
While the Marrakech Festival screens some of the world’s best cinema, it has also been making efforts to help the local cinema industry take the place of the now sinking – but once flourishing - Egyptian show business. As Bruno Barde, Marrakech’s Artistic Director and head of the Le Public Systeme, once told me “the Festival is a great opportunity for Moroccan directors and scriptwriters to learn how to fish”.
The Moroccan monarchy is keen on promoting cinema. The Prince is extremely knowledgeable about this art, I am told, and would like films to showcase the country’s open culture and society. There rigid Islamic laws are not enforced. Women need not cover their heads, and many of them can be seen in daring Western wear.
Though a tiny producer with about 25 movies or so a year, Morocco is undoubtedly far ahead of others in Africa, such as Tunisia or Algeria or Lebanon or even Egypt. The nation’s transparent culture, Barde quips, is not to be found even in Dubai, and its seeds were planted by the King a decade ago when he envisaged the Marrakech Festival. A kingdom that is ruled with the help of a Constitution and bicameral legislature, Morocco seems all set for great cinematic times.
Lindsay Lohan, Gerard Butler Attend Opening of Resort in Morocco
November 13, 2009
Cheb Khaled, The “Moroccan”
Khaled the “Moroccan” screamed the headline; the Algerian newspaper was referring to cheb Khaled, the Algerian-born international “pop rai” music star. The star of the worldwide hits “Didi” and “Aicha” has been getting a lot of grief from certain newspapers in his native Algeria for his presumed pro-Morocco statements regarding the Western Sahara conflict.
Ridicules as it sounds: In the last few months, the pro-Military press in Algeria has been commissioned to launch a ruthless campaign to smear the nationalism of Cheb Khaled. The anti-Morocco clan within the Algerian Military is furious at Khaled for his appearance at a music festival in the Moroccan city of Laâyoun in the Moroccan Sahara, or as the Algerian press like to call it, the occupied capital of the Western Sahara. The Algerian government views Cheb Khaled’s presence in Laayuon as an endorsement of Morocco’s territorial claim on the Sahara, and a rebuke to Algiers effort to convince the average Algerians and the international community that the world stands behind the Algerian position disputing Morocco’s claim.
The king of Rai sang in Laâyoun to please the millions of his Moroccan fans and not to play politics. Khaled, who has always been hugely popular in Morocco, has repeatedly stated his dislike of politics. Answering questions about the implication of his presence in Laayoun, the super star affirmed “I sing; I do not do politics.” However, the “Oujda clan” (the name given to a group of Algerian politicians and Army officials that are known of their fervent anti-Moroccan positions) will not have it; they launched a nasty media campaign attempting to portray cheb Khaled as a “sell out” who values his friendship with the Moroccan Monarch more than a sympathy for the plight of Saharawis wasting away in refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria.
Out of touch with the feelings of ordinary Algerians and Moroccans, the “Oujda clan” refuses to face a simple reality: People in the two countries, Morocco and Algeria, refuse to let the “Western Sahara” conflict hold their historic relationships hostage any longer.
Algerian Military Intelligence (SM) is greatly worried about the impact of Cheb Khaled , perceived pro-Morocco press declarations and his casual attitude towards the Moroccan position on the Sahara issue, on the Algerian public opinion. Khaled is revered in Algeria and has significant influence on the attitude of the average Algerians, especially the youth. Algerian intelligence services fret about a further negative shift of the Algerian public opinion toward the ever expansive anti “Oujda clan” attitude and the Bouteflika’s government continued decisions to squander billions of Algeria gas revenues on a desert adventure while millions of poor Algerians are facing an acute social malaise.
The SM, which has been feeling under siege in the aftermath of the recent Moroccan diplomatic successes, views Khaled’s manifestations as a threat to the long-term grip of the current Algerian government on its message of vilifying Morocco. The level of cruelty of the Algerian government campaign against a star that put Algerian music on the world map is a sign of desperation and high anxiety in al-Mouradia.
Moroccan would love to claim a star of the caliber of Cheb Khaled as a Moroccan; he is most definitely an honorary citizen of Morocco; but the truth is: Khaled is a true “Algerian Sharif”, unlike the elements who are questioning his nationalism.
By HASSAN MASIKY moroccoboard
The Hand of Fatima
The Hand of Fatima
Augusta Palmer seeks to understand her father Robert, with the aid of a camera.
Directed by Augusta Palmer
At Anthology Film Archives, Nov. 13-19
fits squarely into the ever-expanding genre of films documenting a director’s journey into his or her familial past. The public recording of what, in theory, is an intensely private experience, these filmmakers must create enough emotional legibility for the outside viewer to connect with their subjective state, while maintaining that intensely personal quality that brings their film the sheen of authenticity. Play too much to the viewer, and they don’t buy the singularity of the filmmaker’s experience. Keep it too close to the chest, and the film becomes little more than a diary found on the street: conveying the idea of intimacy without providing the context that makes such individual reflections resonate beyond the first-person singular.
Augusta Palmer’s account of her fraught relationship with Robert Palmer, the famed rock critic and musician who was also her father, emanates a sincerity of purpose that’s difficult to critique. For all its earnestness, however, The Hand of Fatima feels a little too thematically diffuse to leave a distinct impression. We may follow along with Palmer on her trip to the Moroccan village of Jajouka, but how this journey alters her conception of her father, herself, or the entrancing local musicians that drew both father and daughter to this far-flung locale remains theoretically clear but at an emotional remove.
Popularized by Brian Jones’ trip to play with the village’s musicians in 1974, Jajouka became both holy-grail and homeland to Robert Palmer throughout the 1970s and '80s. He first traveled there on assignment for Rolling Stone, where he enthusiastically wrote of the almost otherworldly power that the indigenous music and rituals had upon him. Returning throughout the rest of his life, Palmer found spiritual sustenance in Jajouka, as well as a benevolent father figure in Jnuin, the village leader, who eventually accepted Robert as a member of the musical brotherhood.
Having established a delicate if limited relationship with Robert before his death in 1997, Augusta traveled to Jajouka in 2006 with both her young daughter and her father’s third wife (with whom she felt a special connection), hoping to understand his adopted spiritual mecca and, by extension, Robert himself. She eventually meets Jnuin’s son, Bachir Attar, and discovers more about her father’s time in Jajouka and the current state of the musical art form practiced in the village.
The music of Jajouka has an undeniably hypnotic pull, and Palmer lingers upon its history and practice when she travels to Morocco. It’s all interesting to a point, but The Hand of Fatima has trouble connecting the music to the man that purportedly lies at the film’s center. We understand Robert Palmer’s bond to Jajouka intellectually—fed by his earlier passion for American blues music and the filling of the paternal void left by his own taciturn father—without feeling it viscerally, an issue oddly exacerbated by Palmer’s decision to portray many of her father’s experiences via fun but distancing animated sequences. This proves especially disappointing given Palmer’s often clear-eyed account of her father’s life as a whole, which was marked by crippling drug addiction and fraught personal relationships as well as professional triumphs.
The same disconnect can be seen when Palmer attempts to communicate her own epiphanies while in Jajouka. It’s hard not to be moved by images of Augusta hugging her stepmother, tears streaming down her face, as they listen to the Master Musicians of Jajouka play the same music that so inspired her father. Too often, though, Palmer underlines connections between herself, her father, and Jajouka through voiceover: thoughtful and elegant in its own right, but often feeling like an inadequate substitute for eloquent visuals. If The Hand of Fatima’s on-the-fly aesthetic is perhaps unavoidable given the shooting circumstances, it also precludes the kind of assured poetic imagery that may have conveyed Palmer’s thematic links with greater subtlety and effectiveness.
In the end, it’s difficult to dislike a film like The Hand of Fatima, particularly when the experience of creating it seems to have done therapeutic wonders for its maker. It makes me wish I had been able to experience those breakthroughs along with Palmer, rather than watching them occur from a distance.
By Matt Connolly nypress
This is Maroc A Reportage including Film & Photography documenting contemporary music in Morocco By Yann Sivault & Nicolas Orsini
"This is Maroc", is a reportage documenting recently emerging trends of contemporary and eclectic Moroccan music. The exhibition will include photographs representing the spirit of present day Morocco as well portraying cultural aspects that are not readily associated with the tourist image shown in travel brochures. Yann Sivault and Nicolas Orsini during their trip in Morocco have not only collaborated on all visual imagery as well as film footage for the project, but have equally worked very closely with local musicians.
The exhibition will also feature a screening of different footage and interviews realised during the visit of different cities such as Rabat, Casablanca, Meknes, Marrakech and Esserouera. Yann and Nicolas are showing an exciting new face of current musical and cultural trends that are true eye-openers.
Red Gate Gallery is a non-for-profit organisation that is dedicated to the continuous exposure of contemporary and diverse Art forms. It encompasses artists’ studios, a large gallery space suitable for installations, film projections, music performances, live gigs and exhibitions. Red Gate is located within a busy environment between Brixton & Camberwell. The gallery hosts regular events, exploring strands of thought provoking art. Since 1998 it has hosted over 500 events and exhibitions.
From openpr
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