The Zerda or the Songs of Forgetting

“La Zerda and the songs of oblivion” (1982) is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, with “La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua” (1977). Powerful poetic essay based on archives, in which Assia Djebar – in collaboration with the poet Malek Alloula and the composer Ahmed Essyad – deconstructs the French colonial propaganda of the Pathé-Gaumont newsreels from 1912 to 1942, to reveal the signs of revolt among the subjugated North African population. Through the reassembly of these propaganda images, Djebar recovers the history of the Zerda ceremonies, suggesting that the power and mysticism of this tradition were obliterated and erased by the predatory voyeurism of the colonial gaze. This very gaze is thus subverted and a hidden tradition of resistance and struggle is revealed, against any exoticizing and orientalist temptation.

L'Avenir est ailleurs

Aimé Césaire, un Nègre fondamental

Frantz Fanon, trajectoire d'un révolté

Frantz Fanon alone embodies all the issues of French colonial history. Martinican resistance fighter, he enlisted, like millions of colonial soldiers, in the Free Army out of loyalty to France and the idea of freedom that it embodies for him. A writer, he participated in the bubbling life of Saint-Germain with Césaire, Senghor and Sartre, debating tirelessly on the destiny of colonized peoples. As a doctor, he revolutionized the practice of psychiatry, seeking in the relations of domination of colonial societies the foundations of the pathologies of his patients in Blida. Activist, he brings together through his action and his history of him, the anger of peoples crushed by centuries of colonial oppression. But beyond this exceptional journey which makes sensitive the permanence of French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles at the gates of the Algerian desert, he leaves an incomparable body of work which has made him today one of the most studied French authors across the Atlantic.

Die weiße Gefahr

Black Is… Black Ain’t

African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.

In The Footsteps Of Frantz Fanon

Who was Frantz Fanon, the author of Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, this Pan-African thinker and psychiatrist engaged in anti-colonialist struggles? Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon was not yet 20 years old when he landed, weapons in hand, on the beaches of Provence in August 1944 with thousands of soldiers from "Free France", most of whom had come from Africa, to free the country from Nazi occupation. He became a psychiatrist and ten years later joined the Algerians in their fight for independence. Died at the age of 36, he left behind a major work on the relationships of domination between the colonized and the colonizers, on the roots of racism and the emergence of a thought of a Third World in search of freedom. 60 years after his death, the film follows in the footsteps of Frantz Fanon, alongside those who knew him, to rediscover this exceptional man.

So that Algeria May Live

Collectively made Algerian film.

And the Dogs Were Silent

For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.

Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy Headed People

An animated satire on the question of self-image for African American women living in a society where beautiful hair is viewed as hair that blows in the wind and lets you be free. Lively tunes and witty narration accompany a quick-paced inventory of relaxers, gels, and curlers. This short film has become essential for discussions of racism, African American cinema, and empowerment.

Aimé Césaire, Un homme une terre

Alternating interview segments, shots of Martinique landscapes and scenes from Aimé Césaire's play La Tragédie du roi Christophe (1963), Sarah Maldoror portrays her friend as a politician, a poet, and a founder of the Négritude movement.

René Vautier, le maquisard à la caméra

René Vautier, le rebelle

The Death Knell

At the beginning of the 1960s, in Salisbury (now Harare), in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the government of Ian Smith hanged three black revolutionaries who had nevertheless been pardoned by the Queen of England. René Vautier, with ZAPU (Zimbabwe African Party for Unity), denounces this killing. Expelled by the Rhodesian police (informed by the French secret services), the filmmaker shoots a film in Algeria in the form of an indictment against colonial savagery. The film was first banned in France, then authorized in 1965.

Bitch: a word movie

Nantali Indongo, the rapper of the group Nomadic Massive, has long refrained from using the word Bitch in the lyrics of the songs she sings. As an Afro-descendant and mother, she considers that this word’s purpose has always been to dehumanize the Black woman. However, at the junction of the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, she decided for the f irst time to use the b-word as a cry from the heart in her song Time . Aware of the complexity posed by the trivialization of this word, she embarked on a “word movie” across the Americas to understand the origins of the word and its many connotations over time. Her journey allowed her to give a voice larger- than-life to Black women, so that they could themselves express their opinions on the word bitch.

Archie Shepp chez les Touaregs

Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther

The portrait of Eldridge Cleaver, the "Minister of Information" for the Black Panthers movement, in exile in Algiers.

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask

Explores the life and work of the psychoanalytic theorist and activist Frantz Fanon who was born in Martinique, educated in Paris and worked in Algeria. Examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces his involvement in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and throughout the world.

Batouk

This uneven and uninspired documentary of Africa is a collection from various stock footage. Female dancers in mod clothes dance on the Eiffel Tower in comparison to the primitive dances of native Africans. A lone runner trains for a marathon, and a few animals are shown in their natural habitat. Commentary and modern jazz and pop music help to make this seem much longer than 66 minutes.

Déjà le sang de mai ensemençait novembre

The essay by René Vautier, "Déjà le sang de Mai ensemençait Novembre", starts with the recapitulation of the representations of Algeria throughout the history of visual arts in France in an effort to explore the causes for the quest for independence.