143 Sahara Street

Alone in a small white house on the edge of national road 1, the Trans-Saharan road, which connects Algiers to Tamanrasset crossing the immensity of the desert, Malika, 74, one day opened her door to the director Hassen Ferhani, who came there to scout with his friend Chawki Amari, journalist at El Watan and author of the story Nationale 1 which relates his journey on this north-south axis of more than 2000 km. The Malika of Amari's novel, which Ferhani admits to having first perceived as a "literary fantasy", suddenly takes on an unsuspected human depth in this environment naturally hostile to man. She lends herself to the film project as she welcomes her clients, with an economy of gestures and words, an impression reinforced by the mystery that surrounds her and the rare elements of her biography which suggest that she is not from the region, that she left the fertile north of Algeria to settle in the desert where she lives with a dog and a cat.

2021-06-16 | fr

The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

2021-04-25 | he

Cheb Hasni, Je vis encore !

Director Djamel Kelfaoui pays tribute to the great singer Cheb Hasni, king of sentimental raï, who became cult in Algeria and beyond its borders, and who was murdered in the street in September 1994 in Oran, at the age of 26. Unique and last interview filmed a few months before the assassination of the singer considered the king of “raï love” or “sentimental song”. Cheb Hasni had recorded more than 150 cassettes during his career. His memory remains very alive in the Maghreb and Arab world and its diaspora throughout the world. A transgenerational icon, he will be posthumously decorated with the National Merit medal at the rank of Achir.

2008-01-02 | fr

The Panafrican Festival in Algiers

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

1969-01-01 | ar

A Captain's Honor

During a televised debate on the Algerian war in the early 1980s, Professor Paulet denounced the methods of Captain Caron, killed in action in 1957. The widow of the captain, Patricia, decided to file a defamation suit.

1982-12-29 | fr

Amour de vivre

An account of the brief life of the writer Albert Camus (1913-1960), a Frenchman born in Algeria: his Spanish origin on the isle of Menorca, his childhood in Algiers, his literary career and his constant struggle against the pomposity of French bourgeois intellectuals, his communist commitment, his love for Spain and his opposition to the independence of Algeria, since it would cause the loss of his true home, his definitive estrangement.

2010-05-01 | fr

Algeria, Year Zero

Documentary on the beginnings of Algerian independence filmed during the summer of 1962 in Algiers. The film was banned in France and Algeria but won the Grand Prize at the Leipzig International Film Festival in 1965. Out of friendship, the production company Images de France sent an operator, Bruno Muel, who later declared: "For those who were called to Algeria (for me, 1956-58), participating in a film on independence was a victory over horror, lies and absurdity. It was also the beginning of my commitment to the cinema."

1965-10-01 | fr

Un Combat Singulier

2004-06-13 | fr

Le Serment

The Oath, a TV film produced by Algerian television in 1963 following the end of the war of independence, tells the story of young Algerians who joined the resistance after the bloody repressions of May 1945 in Constantinois by the French colonial army .

1963-01-01 | ar

The Battle of Algiers

Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.

1966-09-08 | it

Far from Men

A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.

2015-01-14 | fr

Manifesto of the 121

On September 5, 1960, the trial of about twenty French activists from the "Jeanson Network" began, supporters in the metropolis of the action of the Algerian FLN independence activists. But after a few days, the situation was reversed and the trial transformed into a political arena, it was the government, the army, their policy, it was the entire Algerian war whose trial began. Accused, witnesses, lawyers, overflowing a stunned court, transformed the courtroom into a tribune of the opposition. The trial coincided with the publication of the "Manifesto of the 121" on the right to insubordination, signed among others by Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur Adamov, Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, Marguerite Duras, Pierre Boulez, René Dumont, François Chatelet…

2011-01-01 | fr

Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

1965-07-05 | fr

Aleph

Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.

2021-04-30 | es

Jamila, the Algerian

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

1958-12-09 | ar

Surgeon during the Algerian War

Has everything really been said about the Algerian war? Although the archives are opening up, almost fifty years after the signing of the Evian Agreements (March 18, 1962), direct witnesses are beginning to disappear. They are, however, unique bearers of history, often the only ones able to illustrate the harsh reality of a long-hidden period. Gérard Zwang, surgeon of the contingent between May 1956 and June 1958, is one of these essential witnesses who help us discover an original history of the Algerian War. During his service, in charge of treating the most atrocious wounds of his fellow soldiers, he sees the war from the side of its victims. He did not fight with a machine pistol in his hand, but behind the closed doors of an operating room where life gives way to death in a matter of seconds.

2012-01-09 | fr

Hearts and Minds

Many times during his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson said that ultimate victory in the Vietnam War depended upon the U.S. military winning the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Filmmaker Peter Davis uses Johnson's phrase in an ironic context in this anti-war documentary, filmed and released while the Vietnam War was still under way, juxtaposing interviews with military figures like U.S. Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland with shocking scenes of violence and brutality.

1974-12-20 | en

L'Orientalisme

Orientalism is a literary and artistic movement born in Western Europe in the 18th century. Through its scale and popularity, throughout the 19th century, it marked the interest and curiosity of artists and writers for the countries of the West (the Maghreb) or the Levant (the Middle East). Orientalism was born from the fascination of the Ottoman Empire and followed its slow disintegration and the progression of European colonizations. This exotic trend is associated with all the artistic movements of the 19th century, academic, romantic, realistic or even impressionist. It is present in architecture, music, painting, literature, poetry... Picturesque aesthetics, confusing styles, civilizations and eras, orientalism has created numerous clichés and clichés that we still find today in literature or cinema.

2019-08-27 | fr

Be Water

In 1971, after being rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to his parents’ homeland of Hong Kong to complete four iconic films. Charting his struggles between two worlds, this portrait explores questions of identity and representation through the use of rare archival footage, interviews with loved ones and Bruce’s own writings.

2020-01-25 | en

Raï Story: From Cheikha Rimitti to Cheba Djenet

Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.

2004-12-01 | ar