Introduction

Cinema between France and North Africa: reasoning, production and creation (1970-2010)

           
     It was in 1896, just a year after the invention of the cinematograph, that the first filmed exchanges between France and the countries of North Africa took place. Operators from the Lumière Brothers filmed scenes in the French colony [Algeria] and its two protectorates [Tunisia and Morocco], then offered the public a previously unheard of cinematic experience. Audiences in Algiers and Oran - in which the indigenous people were either a minority or totally absent[i] - discovered the magic of this scientific instrument which though recording reality, was also destined to become a vehicle for dreams[ii]. The following year there were more screenings, in Tunis and in the Royal Palace of Fez, each a step in a process inextricably linking the northern Mediterranean with the south. Certainly for decades a colonial cinema dominated, and from this "ludicrous attempt which consisted of showing [...] a distorted reality [...] unleashing laughter in the working class cinemas in France”[iii], came a series of stereotyped perceptions. But, when the newly independent countries developed their own cinema, these images were overturned, both by the filmmakers who remained in North Africa as well as by those who emigrated to France.

This short film on Algerian cinema emphasizes the desire to fight against the colonial images which were considered degrading. It also gives us a glimpse of the first stirrings of a personal or artistic cinema, underlining the influence of French anti-colonial filmmakers like René Vautier.

What use would these North African film-makers make of the cinematograph, a technology invented in France before being adapted and popularized by other countries as what we now call cinema? Although film was quickly used to assert an identity specific to Algeria and Tunisia more than Morocco, cinema was emancipated from the former colonial power for a relatively short time, while the opposite was true in France. Over the decades, French cinema felt a growing influence of the North African immigrants and their descendants. They became little by little the rising stars, climbing the steps to success.
The moments when these intertwined paths changed places, the interferences and interactions between France and the North African countries, can be highlighted thanks to three factors specific to cinema: firstly there is the presentation on film of the reasoning behind Franco-North African relations, secondly there is the system of feature film production and finally the creative force of these films. Thus, cinema is a cultural production illustrating certain aspects of postcolonial interchange between France and North Africa. Production systems overlap or mimic each other and, when the laws about history and memory were being discussed in France and Algeria in the mid-2000s, cinema reflected the strained relations between the former colonial power and its former colony. Between cultural hegemony and resistance, between shared influences and hybrid creations, film may well be the medium to build a shared Mediterranean imagination.