#tunisian cinema

[dailyworldcinema]

Golshifteh Farahani as Selma Derwich ARAB BLUES / UN DIVAN À TUNIS (2019) dir. Manele Labidi

[phantomladyoverparis]

La mort trouble (1970), dir. Férid Boughedir & Claude d’Anna

[gael-garcia]

FOUR DAUGHTERS (2023, Kaouther Ben Hania) Cinematography by Farouk Laâridh

Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters’ life stories.

[301-302]

الهائمون (Wanderers of the Desert | Nacer Khemir | 1984)

[deepdwnbodythurst]

Un été à la Goulette (1996) dir. Férid Boughedir

[sloshed-cinema]

Dachra (2018)

Yasmine is more prepared to survive horror movies than anyone else. Every beat where she is offered an alternative, she just wants to get the hell out. Good instinct. The alternative, chosen or otherwise, doesn’t lead anywhere good in this sort of situation. Uncertainty and confusion reign supreme here as a group of journalism students go beyond the pale to research a story. It’s certainly not bland. But what they get is a tale of terror quite unlike anything they are prepared to cover. Men unwilling to tell the truth. Women unwilling to speak. It’s all about nondescript meat, and precious little told otherwise.

The cinematography employed is seriously impressive for a first effort in the genre. After the group are led into the depths of hell in a remote village, the night of uncertainty is captured in pools of light, deep shadows, and flashes of strobelit nerves. It’s moody and paranoid, the danger present for the character palpable to the viewer as well. Nobody came screaming out of the darkness, but just how dangerous the moment was for Yasmine was still clear to the viewer. Equally frightenening was the erratic behavior of the child in the Don’t Look Now rain jacket; nothing short of the avatar of evil in any given moment.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'Mongia'.

Asymmetrical framing of faces in a scene.

Witchcraft is mentioned.

The investigation hits a dead-end.

BIG DRINK

A nightmare sequence begins.

Obviously bullshit excuses are thrown around.

[thattunisiandude]

Italian actress Claudia Cardinale (left) with Tunisian actress and singer Hsiba Rushdi (right) in 1958 movie ‘ Juha ’ جحا .

[phantomladyoverparis]

La mort trouble (1970), dir. Férid Boughedir & Claude d’Anna

[gael-garcia]

Four Daughters (2023, Kaouther Ben Hania)

[gregor-samsung]

الرجل الذي باع ظهره [The Man Who Sold His Skin] (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2020)

[akajustmerry]

Hi

1 love your blog and podcast

2 I’m really enjoying your weekly Palestinian film recs

3. Do you have more recommendations for Arab and Middle Eastern cinema ?

Thank you ☺️

helloooooo, thank you 🥰 I have a whole sideblog which I don't promote enough called @swanasource where I and my co-mod @thatidomagirl frequently post middle eastern/SWANA film and films made by swana filmmakers in the film tag here:

I myself am still on my journey of watching more swana films (and non-english and non-Western films) so I won't claim to be any sort of exhaustive expert. but here are some of my favourites!

Salt of this Sea (2008). Dir. Annemarie Jacir. Palestinian film about a Palestinian-American woman heisting an Israeli bank

The Persian Version (2023). Dir. Maryam Kershavez. Comedy about an Iranian-American lesbian who gets pregnant after a one night stand and so decides to learn more about her family history.

Kedi (2016). A calming and beautiful Turkish documentary about the cats of Istanbul

Ali's Wedding (2017). A rom-com about an Iraqi-Australian Muslim who falls in love with the Lebanese girl from his mosque who's helping him get into med school.

The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020). Tunisian thriller about a syrian refugee who agrees to let his back be tattooed and be part of a living exhibition by a notorious artist so he can get a visa.

Sirens (2020). A documentary about the queer Lebanese all-girl metal band, Slave To Sirens, set around the Beirut explosion.

In Vitro (2019). A short Palestinian sci-fi film about an elderly woman in an underground bunker trying to describe the world before to a young woman who's only ever known the bunker.

Cairo Time (2009). Dir. Ruba Nadda. Look, this film isn't perfect but It's about a white American woman who's husband is a UN worker in Egypt. She goes to visit him in Cairo, but her husband is waylaid so he sends his bestie played by the beautiful Alexander Siddig to take her around Cairo and oh my GOD the romantic tension of this movie keeps me up at night.

Butterflies (2018). One of my fave movies ever. A Turkish comedy about 3 estranged siblings who have to take a chaotic road trip to fulfil their father's last wishes.

[anakinsafterlife]

Thoughts on Dune Part 2

All right, friends. Dune Part 2. I absolutely picked the wrong time to start wanting to return to Tumblr, since I'm currently in the thick of Ramadan, but c'est la vie. I'm a bit worried that if I don't review now that I might forget my specific impressions of the movie, though I have to say that if this weren't Ramadan that I absolutely would be going back to see it again in the cinema, which says a lot considering that it's been at least ten years since I've actually wanted to go back and repeat a film instead of just waiting for it to come out on streaming/DVD.

So the movie is good. It is in fact very, very good. It's the Empire Strikes Back of the Dune duology (possibly trilogy), and (much like Empire) in terms of cinematography, music, scripting and acting it's nearly flawless. There are, however, issues, things that might not occur to a majority-Western audience but which are immediately clear to anyone who either comes from an Arab or Muslim background.

What follows here is a deep dive into some of the historical and cultural sources of Dune and some of the ways in which the movie producers, and in some cases fans, have failed to acknowledge those sources.

First of all, it's obvious that the Fremen are meant to be based on the Arabs, but of the the entire main cast there is only ONE actor with an Arab background, and that is Souhaila Yacoub, the half-Tunisian actress who plays Shishakli, the female Fremen warrior who is executed by the Harkonnens. Now, I have to say that this woman was fantastic. Her attitude is completely on point for an Arab, especially a North African Arab: forceful, loud, a bit brash and mocking even under fire. Nicely done. Points to the producers there, but I have to take that point away again because she is literally the only Space Arab who is actually Arab. Javier Bardem, the Spanish actor who plays Stilgard, does have some interesting moments and one of the reasons why I feel that the screenwriters were advised on Arabic traditions/culture. The incident during which he warns Paul about the Jinn in the desert like it's a joke but then immediately turns extremely serious when Paul starts smiling is so in character for an Arab and honestly just a brilliant bit of scripting, but much of the time he also acted more or less like what people *think* a fanatical religious Arab acts like--loud, frantic and unstable.

Not only this, but the "Muslim" behaviour/traditions in the film are at best...vague. People are praying, but in any direction at all. I do realize that this would be a complicated issue on another planet, where the Ka'aba couldn't be pointed to, but there are Islamic rulings for EVERYTHING. Check out the one about praying in space:

Even if they had as a society simply picked a random direction for prayer, they should all be praying at the same time and in the same direction (they seem to do this in larger crowds, but not in the smaller group where we first see people praying). They also definitely shouldn't be talking during prayer or trying to make other people talk to them during prayer (as Chani does), since talking breaks your prayer and you have to start over all over again (during obligatory prayers).

Language, too, is an issue, and a big one, because while I do understand that a conlang was developed for use in this movie, the linguists consulted did know that the language was meant to be heavily influenced by Arabic. Consequently, they've included a lot of fragmentary Arabic in their work. Unfortunately this Arabic is poorly pronounced at best, to the point where I was looking words up and laughing at what they're meant to be based on. For example, "Shai Hulud," the word for the Worms, is based on the Arabicشيء خلود, which means "immortal thing," and should be pronounced with "shai" rhyming with "say" followed by a glottal stop, and the 'h' in "Hulood" is actually a guttural sound like the infamous "ch" in Bach, followed by a long U. Another example is Mua'dib مهذب , a real word in Arabic that means "teacher," but is is actually pronounced with a "th" sound instead of a d and emphasis on the second syllable, not on the last as in French. (Note: I made an error here. There is a word مؤدب , pronounced mostly the same in the movie, but with a glottal stop after the 'u' sound and a short 'i' after the d sound rather than a long vowel, that is usually used to mean polite, urbane, gentlemanly, etc. but which can also mean teacher, although I have never heard it used in this context) "Usul", أصول, Paul's other Fremen name, was likely not, as I had previously guessed, based on the word "Rasool," meaning Prophet, but on أصول الفقه the Principles of islamic Jurisprudence, which also ties directly into a religious/prophetic them. Again, this is pronounced on the long vowel, so with a short first U and a long second U.

I've included the Arabic spellings in here, by the way, so that you can drop them into Google translator and hear how they actually sound.

Now, I do realize that the story itself is set 8000 years in the future and that spoken Arabic as a language would have changed considerably in that time, if it existed still at all, but Arabic is a liturgical language as well as a vehicle for conversation, and Muslims all across the world today use it as a tool for worship. Muslims who have no cultural connection with Arabic often still learn it in order to connect more deeply with religious traditions and simply to perform prayers and other religious duties. Religious scholars consider it to be a necessary duty of the Muslim to learn at least some Arabic:

And keep in mind that the Arabic spoken today across the MENA region is very different (and different in different places) to the Arabic spoken 1400 years ago by the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him). Given Islamic traditions, the chances of the Fremen using liturgical/classical Arabic for their worship would be quite high, even if their spoken language had evolved past the point of being recognizably Arabic.

Keep in mind, also, that Dune as a whole is an allegory for colonialism, economic exploitation of poorer nations (or making rival nations poor through the same), as well as dehumanization of the views and needs of native peoples in order to make that exploitation palatable to the occupying forces (I thought that this was done quite smartly in Jessica's part of the story; although she is sympathetic to the Fremen, she feels that manipulating their religious traditions is the best way to protect her son, and in doing so she allows herself to dehumanize the people who come to rely on her).

It is, therefore, incumbent upon us not to distance ourselves too much from the intended message by claiming that Dune is fiction and need not too accurately reflect the culture and religion of the people that the Fremen are so clearly based on. The fact that the producers have done little to hire Arab actors or induced any real effort to accurately pronounce the Arabic words or accurately portrayal Islamic practices seems to indicate that they are concerned about identifying too closely with the economic and cultural struggle between East and West, properly because they fear the potential economic backlash, and this despite the fact that Frank Herbert clearly wrote his book to illustrate the fallout of that struggle.

Here is a wonderful article written by a culturally Arab woman:

There are numerous other articles addressing the same issues, but I like this one because it's written by a Muslim woman, who also addresses the "hijab cosplaying" in the movie. I didn't get into that much, but I definitely recognize that it's a problem when Muslim women worry about potential violence while wearing hijab in the streets of Western nations, but the same article of clothing is fetishized in movies and fashion.

I've also seen some comment about the Mahdi mention in particular. This is a saviour-figure in Islam who will come near the end of the world. There is no emphasis on this figure in Sunni Islam, but Shias seem to have a significant body of literature concerning this figure and, from what I understand, believe that he may perhaps have already come, and so there has been some poor reception in that community to applying the label of Mahdi to Paul. Criticisms ranging from insensitivity to outright blasphemy have been levelled regarding this usage. Now, there was some tip-toeing around the prophetic theme in Dune, and rightly so, I believe, since the Prophet Mohamed is the "seal of the prophets" in Islam, meaning the last and final. The fact that Paul was essentially set up as a false prophet by the Bene Gesserit does avoid some of the potential fallout from this, and also makes sense of Chani's rejection at the end of the film, since she felt strongly about Paul acting as a false Prophet.

Again, I am aware that there is internal cosmology within the series itself, and that some fans object to the religion of the Fremen being referred to as Islam, but when the inspiration for the entire ethnicity, religion, and the natural resources at stake are as clear as they are in this series, it's also futile to expect that people will not draw those associations, nor that people belonging to the religion or ethnic group in question may not acknowledge the beauty of the movie, the gorgeous cinematography, rousing music, and tightly plotted story, but still take exception to what is clearly Orientalism.

And it is frankly such a shame that we have to place this movie under that header, because the story of Dune is so sympathetic to the Middle East and its peoples, and as I said in the beginning I actually loved the film and found it very beautiful. It was also exciting to see Islamic themes used creatively in mainstream media, but while Frank Herbert clearly wrote the story as an exposition on the exploitation of natural resources, particularly oil, in the MENA region, the truth is that the racism and exploitation that he was protesting are very much alive today and contribute to the oppression of millions. It's particularly disappointing to see the message of the movie sail over the heads of people watching it when Arab Muslims in Palestine are being dehumanized and obliterated at this very moment, and while Libya was one of the latest Arab nations to be targeted for its oil resources, only a decade ago, with European oil companies moving in directly after the downfall of Ghadafi (which makes the timing extremely suspicious, one might say):

And even after the US finished their occupation of Iraq, Western oil companies remained en mass to continued drilling:

Egypt to this day remains economically destabilized while Western nations exploit its oil stocks, to no benefit at all of its peoples:

I'm sure I could cite dozens of other cases, but it's clear that there is a one-on-one parallel between spice melange and oil, making any protests of apoliticism in an inherently political story utterly vain.

I could go on, but I needn't. In short, this beautiful movie could have done so much good even beyond its obvious artistic merits, but instead it is still towing the political line. Much as was the case for Jessica and Paul, sometimes you can be a Harkonnen and not know it.

[sloshed-cinema]

Ashkal (2022)

Does every criminal have a motive? A series of apparent self-immolations clustered around a derelict neighborhood in Tunis makes even more fraught a tinderbox of issues in a country trying to heal after its people worked to overthrow an autocratic regime. Are these deaths merely suicides? Or are they connected, the work of a terrorist bent on sowing chaos or an ideologue with an anti-police mentality? If the gears of justice move slowly, the mechanisms of police corruption are well oiled. Fatma’s quest for the truth is met with scorn and obstruction from her colleagues, and the police union is quick to use the situation and fear over anti-police mentalities to appeal for shuttering the investigation into their crimes and complicity in authoritarianism. Even aside from the human toll of these crimes, the situation makes for a difficult minefield which Fatma and her partner (much more reluctantly) must navigate. It certainly doesn’t help that our adversary is only ever glimpsed at a distance or framed anonymously. The only image of his face, strange and deformed with small eyes and an almost absent nose, is the product of Fatma’s description. When the camera captures him, he’s swathed in bandages or a hoody, only his scarred and burned hands visible. We are trapped in Fatma’s perception during her dogged pursuit, limited by it. To that end, the final confrontation between the two is more emotional than physical. There’s nothing Fatma can do but gaze at her quarry in the inferno and weep in frustration. There is no release when various factions keep stoking the flames, and this mysterious figure is the avatar of that disarray.

The Gardens of Carthage itself reflects the decay of this situation. Construction which was initiated during the regime promptly ended with only very slow progress made in the ensuing years. The result is a strange, apocalyptic landscape of blank floors and open windows, walls opening up to nothing but empty air. People aren’t sure how to move forward, leaving behind ruin and disrepair. The camera at points lingers on austere compositions of steel and concrete accompanied by orchestral cluster chords. It manages to find a sort of elegance in the ugliness, even if it is marred by the proceedings of the film itself. Though the implications are terrible, the film manages to find a sort of strange beauty too in the orange glow of flames slowly overtaking a car in the distance or a man in a high-rise window. The closing moments show a score of people giving into the seduction of the fire, and yet Fatma alone seems able to resist that siren song, not participating in the collective madness.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'immolation' or 'Commission'.

A construction crane appears in a scene.

Ashes are found.

Someone watches an Internet video.

BIG DRINK

Someone stands or sits at the edge of an unfinished building.

The shot looks straight down from above.

[rapha-reads]

One of my brother's best friend is a Tunisian lesbian, I met her ten years ago and she adored me, asked about me all the, and yesterday and today I got to meet her again and hang out with her and really talk with her, and she's just. Super fun. She's a cinema expert and fan, she's a photographer, she works in archeology, she's a metalhead, she's passionate about TV shows and she's from a city in Tunisia that I've always wanted to visit, and we get to talk Arabic languages, music and cultures together, something that she told me she can't do normally because she doesn't know a lot of Maghrebian people and... Yeah, she's very cool. Very, very cool.

[revev2]

Remembering Yasser Jradi: A Tunisian Artist, Activist, and Revolutionary

Today, we gather to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Yasser Jradi, a true Renaissance man of Tunisia. As an artist, activist, and revolutionary, Yasser touched countless lives and left an indelible mark on Tunisia’s cultural and political landscape. Yasser was not just an artist; he was art personified. A master of calligraphy, ceramics, photography, cinema, and music, he poured his soul…

[theprofessorofdesire]

Haydée Chikly Tamzali was a Tunisian-Jewish actress, writer, and filmmaker who played an essential role in the development of Arabic and African cinema.

Chikly began working with her father as a young girl. When she was 16, he directed her in her first starring role in the short film Zohra (1922), which was written by Chikly herself and is considered the first fiction film made in Tunisia. She served as her father's muse and was able to participate in various aspects of filmmaking, including film editing and hand-coloring.

📷 Tunisian actress, writer, and filmmaker Haydée Samama Chikly Tamzali, 1922.