Film Festival

A groundbreaking and exiting program of Maghrebi-French cinema: an emerging trend reflecting upon the legacy of colonialism and the challenges of integration and assimilation of immigrant populations in France. This exciting program premiered at ArteEast's 2007 CinemaEast Film Festival in New York. This is a North Carolina premiere!!!

"A Touring Exhibition, curated by Carrie Tarr and organized by ArteEast (www.arteeast.org).

The films will be shown at the times indicated in the Nelson Mandela Auditorium of the FedEx Global Education Center (301 Pittsboro Street) on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I. Voisins Voisines

By Malik Chibane. France, 2005, 90 minutes

Saturday, April 19, 9:30-11:00 PM

Synopsis
A rapper is racing against time—he has just three days to write his lyrics; otherwise, he can say good-bye to his advance from the record company. When he finally finds inspiration right on his doorstep, in the often comic struggles of his neighbors in the Mozart Estate housing project, he sets the stage for a lively hip-hop fable, set to the beat of the banlieues.

Filmmaker's Biography
Malik Chibane was born in the region of Drôme, France, in 1964. When he was three his family moved to Goussainville, a Parisian suburb. Trained as an electronics engineer, in 1985 he also learned stage lighting and worked at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. That same year, he and three friends founded IDRISS, an association that organizes leisure and educational activities, community centers for the unemployed and video workshops. In 1990, Chibane received a diploma as cultural events organizer. He then wrote his first fiction feature, Hexagone, about his working-class suburb and immigrants of Arab origin and their offspring. Without a producer or public funding, the film was modestly financed through IDRISS and shot in 16mm with much of the cast working without pay. After some support from a variety of institutions, the film was transferred to 35mm and released in theaters in February 1994. It was a critical and popular success. Next, he wrote and directed Douce France (1995), the television drama Nés quelque part (1997) and Voisins Voisines.

Credits
Cast: Frédéric Diefenthal, Anémore, Jackie Berroyer, Nora Armani
Writers: Malik Chibane, Jackie Berroyer, Candice Berner, Fellag, Gwendoline Hamon, Insa, Sarah Maldoror, Hakim Sarahoui
Producer: Nadia Hasnaoui (Alhambra Films, Box Air Production)
Cinematographer: Georges Lechaptois
Editor: Pierre Goupillon, Cathy Chamorey
Music: David Pépin, Jean-Paul Bottemanne, Jocob Koffi, Pierre Goupillon, Alain

II. Where Fig Trees Grow (Rue des Figuiers)

By Yasmina Yahiaoui. France, 2005, 82 minutes

Saturday, April 19, 7:30-9:30 PM

Synopsis
In Yasmina Yahiaoui’s congenial ensemble piece, the setting is Rue des Figuiers, a (fig-tree-less) North African neighborhood in Toulon, where women hold sway and fundamentalist puritanism is given short shrift. Djamila is a middle-aged, belly-dancing femme fatale whose long-term lover, the rakish hairdresser Marfouz, finally gives in to his family and imports a demure young bride from the Maghreb. This, needless to say, causes uproar among the street’s other inhabitants—including a no-nonsense madam, a teenage girl on the run from her own domineering mother and an eccentric grandmother, played by veteran Marthe Villalonga. Broad, boisterous and bracingly impious, Yahiaoui’s film is a provocatively upbeat broadcast from the female side of Islamic culture. Visually brisk and not a little cartoonish, Where Fig Trees Grow carries more than a dash of Pedro Almodóvar’s influence, camp lip-sync sequences included.

Filmmaker's Biography
Born in Saint-Denis in 1964, Yasmina Yahiaoui studied journalism and worked in the press before moving to producing segments for the television magazine Sucré-Salé and, later, Saga-Cités, which dealt directly with questions of immigrants and integration. In 1989, she directed Voilée-Dévoilée, Abou et Hol and in 2003, A Force, à force... y’en a marre!

Credits Cast: Fellag, Marthe Villalonga, Joan Titus, Monia Hichri, Biyouna, David Mourouguin, Mounir Margoum, Souad Mouchrik
Writer: Soraya Nini
Producer: Kinok Films
Cinematographer: Pascale Granel
Editor: Catherine Schwartz
Sound: Nicolas Waschkomsky and Corinne Rozenberg

III. Bled Number One

By Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche. Algeria/France, 2006, 100 minutes

Friday, April 18, 9:00-11:00 PM

Synopsis
A follow-up to his well-regarded debut "Wesh-Wesh", Bled Number One is a slice-of-life film that speaks volumes about the conditions of life in today’s Algeria. Kamel is deported from France back to his native Algeria after being released from prison. There he finds that beneath the veneer of tranquil and bucolic village life lays an intense struggle between many forces – religion, secularism, modernity, and notions of tradition and honor. He watches as these conflicts mar the lives of the townsfolk around him. Kamel's cousin Louisa, who has taken her young son and left her husband, is violently received when she returns home to her mother and brother. A gang of young men, claiming to be acting in the name of religion, harass those who they deem to be offending it. With this tempestuous backdrop, Kamel must decide whether his birthplace is really is home.

Filmmaker's Biography
A long-time lover of cinema, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche decided in 2001, armed with a small DV camcorder, to direct Wesh, Wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? with a few friends, a film on a sensitive subject: the difficult re-insertion into the working world of a former delinquent. The young director took as a frame for his story the Cité des Bosquets in Seine-Saint Denis, a place that he has known well since childhood. This first shot took the Léo Sheer prize urging its distribution at the International Festival of Film de Belfort in 2001. In 2005, he signed his second production, Bled number one, in which he plays a former prisoner expelled from his country of origin, Algeria, a country that he reveals through European eyes.

Credits Cast: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Meriem Serbah, Abel Jafr
Writers: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Louise Thermes
Producer: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche
Cinematography: Lionel Sautier, Hakim Si Ahmed, Olivier Smittarello
Editor: Nicolas Bancilhon
Music: Rodolphe Burger

IV. They Call Me a Muslim

By Diana Ferrero. Italy/France/Iran, 2006, 27 minutes

Friday, April 18, 7:45-9:00 PM

http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c698.shtml

Synopsis
In popular Western imagination, a Muslim woman in a veil – or hijab – is a symbol of Islamic oppression. But what does it mean for women’s freedom when a democratic country forbids the wearing of the veil? In this provocative documentary, filmmaker Diana Ferrero portrays the struggle of two women – one in France and one in Iran – to express themselves freely.

In 2004, the French government instituted an "anti-veil law," forbidding Muslim girls from wearing the hijab to school. Samah, a teenager in Paris who, at 14 decided to wear the veil, explains how the law attacks her sense of identity – and does not make her feel liberated. “Who says that freedom is not wearing anything on your head?” she asks. Half a world away in Tehran, “K,” forced to wear the hijab by the Islamic regime, defiantly wears it her own way – and her translucent scarf loosely draped over her hair puts her at risk of arrest. When Ferrero films her at home, K, comfortable in a tank top and shorts, says, “They call me Muslim... But do you see me as a Muslim? What do you have in your mind for a Muslim person?” Beautifully shot and finely crafted, THEY CALL ME MUSLIM highlights how women still must struggle for the right to control their own bodies – not only under theocratic regimes, but also in secular, democratic countries where increasing discrimination against Muslims and sexism intersect.

Filmmaker's Biography
Diana Ferrero is a native of Rome, Italy. She came to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship in 2003 and received a Master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley's graduate school of journalism in 2005. She has produced and reported for a variety of Italian and American outlets. Her first documentary, They Call Me Muslim, premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York. She now works in Washington, DC., for Al Jazeera’s new English-language channel.