Logo de Dreflix

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.

Five Directors On The Battle of Algiers

They Chose Algeria

Many of them participated in the struggle for Algerian independence. There are "those who believed in heaven", priests, Christians committed against torture, friends of the "natives", there are "those who did not believe in it", communist activists, students, progressive intellectuals, others remained in this country because they could not imagine living anywhere other than in this land of all passions. They are European and chose to stay in Algeria after independence, most of them opted for Algerian nationality. The film is another vision of the history of Algeria from the end of the fifties to the present day, told by these Europeans filmed at home, or in the context of their activities, illustrated by unpublished archive documents.

Haïti, la rançon de l'indépendance

No overview found

Regards D'en Face - Alger

It is with the architect Jean-Jacques Deluz, that we visit Algiers, "his city" since 1960 and that he left only two years during the worst moments of terrorism. From the Casbah, in the 19th century center, including the cities of Fernand Pouillon and Bab El Oued to arrive at the new city of Maelma which he built today. Tender look, but without concessions at the same time architectural promenade and meetings with actors of art and culture: Djamel Allam, the singer Kabyle, Djamel Amrani, the poet, friend of Jean Sennac, Mohamed Ben Gettaf, Dramaturge and director of the theater of Algiers, Souad Delmi-Bourras, young designer Boudjemàa Kareche, director of the Algerian cinema, Amine Kouider, conductor, who relaunches the opera in Algeria, the painter Malek Salah, and others. A look at Algeria and the Algerians, far from the clichés of certain media, the bias being to seek signs of hope rather than "blood and tears".

They Joined the Front

In this film, four key witnesses, who live in Algeria today, as full-fledged Agerians, show us what this colonization was really like, so "beneficial" that they themselves perceived it as the oppression of one people by another. Three of them, who today would be called "pieds noirs," in other words, those Europeans to whom France, the occupying power, gave the best land, taken from the indigenous populations, work, and exclusive rights, not shared by the entire population, lived rather well compared to the majority of the "natives." The fourth was far from all that and lived in Argentina. Annie Steiner, Felix Colozzi, Pierre Chaulet, and Roberto Muniz explain to us what led them to show solidarity with the struggle of the weak, the humiliated, and to risk their freedom and their lives by committing to liberate Algeria.

The Three Teas in Algeria

Thierry Damilano and his team of Tuareg guides will take you on a trek in the Algerian Sahara, to discover the local culture with a mandatory visit to the hermitage of Father de Foucauld facing Assekrem, then climbing the legendary peaks of the Hoggar massif.

Portugal: Carnations Against Dictatorship

In Portugal, during the night of April 24-25, 1974, a peaceful uprising put an end to the last government of the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime established in 1933 by dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), paving the way for full democracy: a chronicle of the Carnation Revolution.

Algérie 1988-2000 : Autopsie d'une tragédie

No overview found

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

No overview found

De Gaulle, the Last King of France

Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of government, left his mark on the country . He was statesman of action and has been compared to a monarch. This film depicts the general’s personality through the great events of his presidential term, at a time when the world was undergoing considerable changes.

Sawt Echaâb

“La Voix du Peuple,” composed of archival photographs by René Vauthier and others, exposes the root causes of the armed conflict of the Algerian resistance. Participating in a war of real images against French colonial propaganda, these images aimed to show the images that the occupier had censored or distorted, by showing the extortions of the French occupation army: torture, arrests and arbitrary executions, napalm bombings, roundabout fires, erasing entire villages from the map, etc. This is what the French media described as a “pacification campaign”.

Aux origines, l'esclavage

No overview found

À Propos De... L'autre Détail

Documentary edited from testimonies on the torture of people who experienced the war. Some witnesses were tortured by Jean-Marie Le Pen. These testimonies will help defend the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné in court against Jean-Marie Le Pen for defamation. The film was shown in 1985 during the trial and some witnesses also came to support the newspaper. But the 1963 amnesty law protects the politician, prohibiting the use of images that could harm people who served during the Algerian war.

De Gaulle, le monarque et le Parlement

No overview found

The Song of the Hoggar

Le Chant du Hoggar, a fictionalized documentary directed by Pierre Ichac, which takes as its theme the adventurous life of the Tuaregs of yesteryear, the setting being the lesser-known mountains and valleys of the Hoggar, and the actors being the Tuaregs themselves. This production, of considerable interest, was filmed last year by Pierre Ichac, a project manager for the General Government of Algeria. For six months, the young director, who traveled more than 7,000 kilometers by car and about 1,000 kilometers by Méhari through the Hoggar mountains, recorded 8,000 meters of film. The beautiful Fatimata reigns over all hearts in the wandering Tuareg tribe, with her herds, in the high valleys of the Hoggar. But she loves The Lion, the bravest of the young warriors of an enemy tribe. And it is Fatimata's name that The Lion lovingly carves on the rocks of the mountain.

The Lives of Albert Camus

Albert Camus died at 46 years old on January 4, 1960, two years after his Nobel Prize in literature. Author of “L'Etranger”, one of the most widely read novels in the world, philosopher of the absurd and of revolt, resistant, journalist, playwright, Albert Camus had an extraordinary destiny. Child of the poor districts of Algiers, tuberculosis patient, orphan of father, son of an illiterate and deaf mother, he tore himself away from his condition thanks to his teacher. French from Algeria, he never ceased to fight for equality with the Arabs and the Kabyle, while fearing the Independence of the FLN. Founded on restored and colorized archives, and first-hand accounts, this documentary attempts to paint the portrait of Camus as he was.

The Call of the Hoggar, In the Heart of Atlantis

Documentary on the French Alpine expedition to Hoggar in Algeria, starring Roger Frison-Roche, Raymond Coche, Pierre Lewden, and François de Chasseloup-Laubat. The 1935 French Alpine Expedition to Hoggar was conceived and prepared by Lieutenant Raymond Coche, the ideal leader for an expedition that would combine alpine and Saharan terrain in Algeria. Among his goals, he set himself the task of leading a French rope team to the still-untouched summits of Atakor and Tefedest and planting the French flag there. His old friend, Pierre Lewden, an athlete and journalist, was soon on the team, and to complete their project and complete the trio, they called on Roger Frison-Roche, a guide from Chamonix and one of the best climbers of this generation. A few days before their departure from Paris, filmmaker Pierre Ichac joined them.

Manca Moro

Born to an Algerian father and a Sicilian mother in Tunisia, I have always been wealthy of three cultures. This motherland is where were born my Algerian ancestors when it was called Ifriqya but also my Sicilian grand-parents whose parents were part of the important migration flux of the beginning of the last century. A reservoir of workforce by the thousands reached the shores of this "promised land". A hundred years later, I embark on a quest to rediscover my Sicilian family, exiled for the past sixty years, scattered between Italy and France.

CHoosing at Twenty

Top Billed Cast

Similar movies

The Zerda or the Songs of Forgetting

Five Directors On The Battle of Algiers

They Chose Algeria

Haïti, la rançon de l'indépendance

Regards D'en Face - Alger

They Joined the Front

The Three Teas in Algeria

Portugal: Carnations Against Dictatorship

Algérie 1988-2000 : Autopsie d'une tragédie

Frantz Fanon, trajectoire d'un révolté

Die weiße Gefahr

De Gaulle, the Last King of France

Sawt Echaâb

Aux origines, l'esclavage

À Propos De... L'autre Détail

De Gaulle, le monarque et le Parlement

The Song of the Hoggar

The Lives of Albert Camus

The Call of the Hoggar, In the Heart of Atlantis

Manca Moro