8th edition of the International Film Festival of Marrakesh |
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Collection title
Collection SNRT
First broadcast date
12/09/2007
Abstract
The Festival of International Film of Marrakesh (FIFM) is an event of great media coverage, which international reputation is confirmed each time.
The jury of the 8th edition of the Festival is chaired by the American filmmaker Barry Levinson, and, as usual, the festival of Marrakesh confirmed its diversity and openness to the world: and this year a tribute was paid to the British cinema, the filmmaker Russian Andre Konchalovsky and the actress Michelle Yeho.
The Festival also celebrates 50 years of Moroccan cinema and pays tribute to the Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine (1926-2008).
Broadcaster
SNRT - AlAoula
Audiovisual form
Documentary
Personalities
- Barry Levinson
- Sigourney Weaver
- Youssef Chahine
Secondary themes
- Art, Culture and Knowledge / Live performances
- Art, Culture and Knowledge / Media
Map locations
- Morocco - Inland - Marrackech
Context
Best of the 8th Marrakech International Film Festival
Julien Gaertner
Created in 2000, the International Marrakech Film Festival symbolises the renewal of cinema in Morocco, North Africa's most dynamic country in terms of film-making. Indeed although this cultural event is a shop-window for the country and for the town of Marrakech, on a wider level it symbolises the kingdom's recent efforts to develop its film industry. From the new studios at Ouarzazate to the multiplexes in Casablanca, Morocco has profoundly reformed the production structure and infrastructure of its film business, inherited, as in Algeria and Tunisia, from the colonial period.
But the days when the Lumière Brothers operator Felix Mesguich was turning his handle to take the very first shots of Algeria, creating the colonial cinema, are long gone. The first film festival was created in Tangier in 1968 at a time when local film-makers were shooting their first feature films. Now, thanks to its natural settings and the production facilties at Ouarzazate, Morocco not only attracts many foreign productions, it is also developing a flourishing independent film business which is finding its place on the international festival circuit. Nabil Ayouch, Faouzi Bensaïdi, Leïla Marrakchi, Noureeddine Lakhmari and Leïla Kilani, film-makers whose films are regularly seen abroad as well as in the multi-plexes developing across the country, particualrly in Casablanca, Marrakech, Rabat and Tangier. Complexes which are trying to bring Moroccans back into cinemas in a country where pirating off the internet has been common and many view films at home. A practice that has largely contributed to the cinemas' decline. New cinemas are part of a film-orientated dynamism which includes Tangier's film-library, opened in 2007, Marrakech's École Normale Supérieure d’Arts Visuels and of course the International Film Festival at Marrakech. A dynamism intended to turn Moroccan cinema into a national cultural heritage. Following the French model of an advance on earnings, the government has recently set up a system of aid to encourage film making, and the effects of that support is being clearly felt.
From Ali Zaoua (N. Ayouch, 2000) to Sur la planche (L. Kilani, 2012) and Casanegra (N. Lakhmari, 2008), Moroccan films, portraying a society riddled with inequalities, are out of step with those from the rest of Arab world. For much of Moroccan society is a thousand miles from the one which every year for the last ten years has unrolled the red carpet in Marrakech. But original creations and sequins have always been closely linked in this artistic industry, and in this case it's a symbiosis which proves the health and vitality of Morocco's cinema.
Bibliography :
- Sandra Gayle Carter, What Moroccan Cinema? A Historical and Critical Study, Lexington Books, 2009