Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.
Omar, better known as Omar the Strawberry, is an old-fashioned bandit. Forced to flee to Algeria, he makes a living out of petty crime, accompanied by his famous sidekick Roger. After decades of ruling the French criminal underworld, they must come to terms with their new life together, which until now has been one of debauchery and violence.
Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing for the camera something which is not there. It is about the mirages of nature—and the nature of mirage.
1516, Legend has it that the king of Algiers had a wife named Zaphira. When the pirate Aroudj Barbarossa arrives to liberate the city from the Spaniards, he is determined to conquer Zaphira as well as the kingdom itself. But is Zaphira willing to let him, or is she plotting for herself?
Frantz Fanon is a renowned politician and decolonialisation activist. This feature focuses on his visionary social therapy methods during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1953 to 1956. A piece of sober anti-racism.
In 1988, Johnny Leclerc, the son of a Norman mother and an Alsatian father, lives in a suburban housing estate with his friends. He behaves like a Muslim, observes Ramadan and wears a djelaba. He's even convinced that his name is Abdelbachir and that he was born in a small village in the bled. When his friend Yacine gets into trouble with a local kaid and decides to return to Algeria for the vacations, he smuggles himself into the Sabri family's luggage to fulfill his dream and finally get to know his "roots". As soon as he arrived on the Algerian coast, Johnny felt right at home. But Yacine is opposed to his father, who wants to arrange his marriage.
On August 5, 1928, after 2 hours and 32 minutes of racing, the 71st rooster wearing the bib entered the Olympic stadium in Amsterdam. Ahmed El Ouafi Bouguéra wins the gold medal and becomes the first Olympic champion from the African continent. He achieved his feat under the tricolor flag. The start of his real marathon is underway. The history of sport extends to the history of Algeria and France. This documentary retraces the different stages of the life of this great champion, not only the history of sport but also the great story. Archival photographs and interviews mingle with the painted paintings. The series thus once again gives voice to this forgotten hero, one of the great heroes of immigration who defended France for more than a century.
Omar, a young Franco-Algerian from La Garenne-Colombes, decided to spend his vacation in the country of his ancestors, Algeria. On his return, he boards the ferry “Le Tassili” and during the crossing, he meets people who share his doubles, in a good mood that does not hide their heartbreaks.
Algeria from above is the first documentary made entirely from the sky on Algeria. Through the eye of the famous Yann Arthus-Bertrand this documentary vividly depicts this great country, and its vibrant cultural and natural treasures. From North to South and from West to East, it shows us the entirety of Algeria, lives in the large hectic coastal cities, Atlas mountains, oases of the Sahara or gentle hills of the Sahel. With a rich past that seems to have crossed all civilizations, and a territory where all natural environments amalgamate, Algeria appears here in all its diversity and its unity.
Who remembers Mohamed Zinet? In the eyes of French spectators who reserve his face and his frail silhouette, he is simply the “Arab actor” of French films of the 1970s, from Yves Boisset to Claude Lelouch. In Algeria, he's a completely different character... A child of the Casbah, he is the brilliant author of a film shot in the streets of Algiers in 1970, Tahya Ya Didou. Through this unique work, Zinet invents a new cinema, tells another story, shows the Algerians like never before. In the footsteps of his elder, in the alleys of the Casbah or on the port of Algiers, Mohammed Latrèche will retrace the story of Tahya Ya Didou and its director.
The Second World War. French authorities ban political parties and unions. In Algeria, the leaders of political and trade union organizations were arrested and interned in "surveillance" camps with more than 2,000 French and foreigners: communist activists, trade unionists, brigadists, Spanish republicans and other opponents of the Vichy regime. The Djenien Bourezg camp is one of these camps, located in southern Algeria and is one of the most formidable. An old activist for the Algerian national cause returns to the scene. He blows away the ashes that cover this part of history. And through it, we discover the hard fight of the camp inmates for respect and human dignity, under a fascist command.
This 17-minute documentary is featured on the 3-Disc Criterion Collection DVD of The Battle of Algiers (1966), released in 2004. An in-depth look at the Battle of Algiers through the eyes of five established and accomplished filmmakers; Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, Julian Schnabel and Mira Nair. They discuss how the shots, cinematography, set design, sound and editing directly influenced their own work and how the film's sequences look incredibly realistic, despite the claim that everything in the film was staged .
Parisian authorities clash with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in director Alain Tasma’s recounting of one of the darkest moments of the Algerian War of Independence. As the war wound to a close and violence persisted in the streets of Paris, the FLN and its supporters adopted the tactic of murdering French policemen in hopes of forcing a withdrawal. When French law enforcement retaliated by brutalizing Algerians and imposing a strict curfew, the FLN organizes a peaceful demonstration that drew over 11,000 supporters, resulting in an order from the Paris police chief to take brutal countermeasures. Told through the eyes of both French policemen as well as Algerian protestors, Tasma’s film attempts to get to the root of the tragedy by presenting both sides of the story.
Ahmed Malek’s name might have been forgotten by his fellow Algerians but his timeless tunes certainly haven’t. Called the Ennio Morricone of Algiers, he composed music for more than 200 movies, amongst which the most famous films of the Algerian New Wave in the 70s and the 80s can be found. Paloma Colombe, a DJ, digger and documentary director, went to Algiers to meet his daughter, friends and former coworkers. Images of the city by night offer a perfect background to Ahmed Malek’s music. Globetrotter, pioneer of electronic music and of the concept of the home studio, he created a unique sound that truly goes beyond genres and countries.
El Gusto is the story of an orchestra of Jewish and Muslim musicians torn apart by war 50 years ago, and recently reunited for an exceptional concert. These musicians share a passion they never lost: the soul of Algiers, Chaabi music.
Recognizing no boundaries to her love, Angele manages to foment riots, rages and tragedy in colonial Algeria. Angele, an Algerian colonist with impeccably French origins, has fallen in love with Said, the assistant in her brother-in-law's bakery shop. Said is conscious of his Arab origins and traditions, and Angele has her work cut out for her if she wants to persuade him to marry her. Once she does, all hell breaks loose, as neither her European-origin peers nor Said's conservative Arab family approve of the union. When word of the proposed marriage gets out, strikes, violence and murder quickly follow, ruining not only Angele's life, but the lives of those around her. Her brother-in-law Paco, meanwhile, has been doggedly trying to get along and raise his family in an increasingly chaotic and difficult situation.
It is the evocation of a life as brief as it is dense. An encounter with a dazzling thought, that of Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist of West Indian origin, who will reflect on the alienation of black people. It is the evocation of a man of reflection who refuses to close his eyes, of the man of action who devoted himself body and soul to the liberation struggle of the Algerian people and who will become, through his political commitment, his fight, and his writings, one of the figures of the anti-colonialist struggle. Before being killed at the age of 36 by leukemia, on December 6, 1961. His body was buried by Chadli Bendjedid, who later became Algerian president, in Algeria, at the Chouhadas cemetery (cemetery of war martyrs ). With him, three of his works are buried: “Black Skin, White Masks”, “L’An V De La Révolution Algérien” and “The Wretched of the Earth”.
In 1967, Visconti came to Algiers for the filming of The Stranger with Mastroianni and Anna Karina. Camus, during his lifetime, had always refused to allow one of his novels to be brought to the screen. His family made another decision. The filming of the film was experienced in Algiers, like a posthumous return of the writer to Algiers. During filming, a young filmmaker specializing in documentaries Gérard Patris attempts a report on the impact of the filming of The Stranger on the Algerians. Interspersed with sequences from the shooting of Visconti's film, he films Poncet, Maisonseul, Bénisti and Sénac, friends of Camus, in full discussions to situate Camus and his work in a sociological and historical context. “The idea is for us to show people, others, ourselves as if they could all be Meursault, or at least the witnesses concerned to his drama.”
"Djazaïrouna", produced by the cinema service of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), is a montage film intended to inform the international community at the UN in 1959 on the objectives pursued by the Algerian resistance during the war of 'Algeria. Independence in Algeria (1954-1962). In 1959, Djamel-Eddine Chanderli and Mohammed Lakdar-Hamina produced Djazaïrouna (Our Algeria) from images taken by René Vautier and Doctor Pierre Chaulet. This film, completed a little later and will result in the film “The Voice of the People”. This documentary on the history of Algeria through a montage of current events, traces the political and military actions of the A.L.N, the demonstrations of December 1960, and the attack on a fortified French base on the border between Algeria and Tunisia.
What musical genre can claim to have gone, in the space of fifty years, from a hidden cabaret in Oran to Super Bowl halftime? Born in Algeria at the end of the Second World War, the raï wave spread from the cabarets of western Algeria to the cassette shops of Barbès in Paris, before sweeping the world at the end of the 1980s. its hybridization, the intoxicating music traveled from Algerian and French weddings to the biggest international stages, before suddenly disappearing from the radar at the dawn of the new millennium. Icons that have disappeared, including Cheikha Remitti and Prince Hasni, to young heirs, passing by the star Khaled, the collector Hadj Sameer trace the tumultuous course of this musical genre, between clandestinity, planetary glory and resistance.
In 1939 in eastern Algeria, Omar, a young boy of ten, lives with his family in a room in Dar Sbitar, a house shared by several families who overcome the trials they go through every day to ensure their subsistence. Her deceased father is Aïni, the mother, who bleeds herself from all four veins to keep her children and their grandmother alive. The families of Dar Sbitar share their intimacy and their daily life, this life animates the big house, which itself becomes a character in its own right. "El Harik" (The Fire), is an Algerian drama series in 10 episodes adapted from Mohamed Dib's trilogy "The Big House", "The Fire" and "The Loom".
"Bled Music" is an Algerian musical television program broadcast on ENTV between 1991 and 1992. directed by Aziz Smati and presented by Kamel Dynamite, Farid Rockeur and Samia Benkherroubi. The show, with its irreverent tone, was very popular and had a significant impact on the Algerian music scene, allowing the emergence of many artists including Chaba Fadela, Cheb Sahraoui, Cheb Anouar and Mohamed Lamine. A ranking of music videos by popularity and relied on fans sending their votes by mail. At the end of the 1980s, unrest broke out in Algeria which led the country into a Black Decade. At this time, fundamentalist groups attempted to ban music and most other forms of artistic expression. The show continued to air despite death threats, but on February 14, 1994, Aziz Smati was shot in both legs by a young extremist, which ultimately led to the end of the show .
