Le Grand Désert

Frantz Fanon, trajectoire d'un révolté

November 2021 •French

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.

The Sahara: The Forgotten History of the World's Harshest Desert

December 2006 •English

At once a vast expanse of mesmerizing desolation and the crucible of human history, the Sahara Desert has been both the battlefield of empires and the haunted wilderness at the margins of the known world for thousands of years. Shot on location, this exhilarating documentary brings to life the Sahara’s cruel history and the conflicts that still plague its people. THE SAHARA recounts the story of kings who once led caravans of 30,000 people across the desert, bearing riches beyond imagination. It tells of Roman death squads that exterminated the citizens of the Empire’s most bitter rival and how the Foreign Legion crafted a legend out of last stands and lost causes. From the fabled metropolis of Timbuktu to the shores of Tripoli, THE SAHARA is an illuminating exploration of this unforgiving and remote land of myth and mirage.

La Bataille d'Alger, l'empreinte

January 2018 •French

Cheikh Djemaï looks back on the genesis of Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature film, The Battle of Algiers (1965). Through archive images, extracts from the film and interviews with personalities, the filmmaker retraces the journey of a major work - from the events of the Algiers Casbah (1956-1957) to the presentation of the Lion of 'Or causing the anger of the French delegation in Venice - which left its mark as much in the history of cinema as in that of Algeria.

Cierzo

November 2022 •Spanish

At the border between Navarre and Aragon we find the moors known as the Bardenas Reales, characterized by the dust and the omnipresence of the northern wind. This is a portrait of a land, but also a journey through Pilar’s memories. It is a glance at the past but also the present, and about how everything has changed, for better or worse.

China Is Still Far

April 2010 •Arabic

On November 1, 1954, near Ghassira, a small village lost in the Aurès, a couple of French teachers and an Algerian boss were the first civilian victims of a seven-year war which would lead to the independence of Algeria. More than fifty years later, Malek Bensmaïl returns to this Chaoui village, which has become “the cradle of the Algerian revolution”, to film, throughout the seasons, its inhabitants, its school and its children.

Interviews with Abdelkrim Baba Aïssa

February 2024 •French

In 2024, Abdelkrim Baba Aissa, aged 75, engages in a series of filmed interviews with Algerian journalist Thoria Smati. They address the chronology of the rich and committed career of this self-taught Algerian actor, director, producer and screenwriter, who made his debut on Algerian television as an assistant director then at ONCIC as a director in the years 70.

M'hamed Issiakhem

December 1985 •Arabic

"A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." It is in this film by Fawzi Sahraoui produced by the RTA in 1985 and filmed a few months before the painter M'hamed Issiakhem 'turns off this sentence is spoken. A very interesting docu-fiction in which Issiakhem delivers himself with finesse, passion and generosity.

Nazca Desert Mystery

November 2022 •English

One of the world’s greatest ancient enigmas, the Nazca lines are a dense network of criss-crossing lines, geometric shapes, and animal figures etched across 200 square miles of Peruvian desert. Who created them and why? Ever since they were discovered in the 1920s, scholars and enthusiasts have raised countless theories about their purpose. Now, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of long-hidden lines and figures as well as evidence of ancient rituals, offering new clues to the origins and motivations behind the giant desert symbols.

Déjà le sang de mai ensemençait novembre

January 1982 •French

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.

L'Histoire Du Film "La Bataille D'Alger"

January 2018 •French

More than fifty years after the release of the film “The Battle of Algiers” in theaters in June 1966, director Salim Aggar found, after a search which lasted more than a year and a half, the actors, extras and technicians who worked on the film directed by Gillo Pentecorvo and produced by Yacef Saadi. In this documentary full of anecdotes and stories about the filming of the film, the director found the actress who played the role of Hassiba Ben Bouali, the young 17-year-old actress who played Bouhamidi's bride but especially certain figures important parts of the film who were barely 10 years old at the time of filming and who no one will recognize today. Beyond the important historical aspect of the film, the documentary focused mainly on the social, cinematographic and cultural aspect of the film and its impact on a generation which had just regained independence.

Greening the Desert

February 2007 •English

Permaculture expert Geoff Lawton describes how he and a team of volunteers grew an oasis in arid, salty lowland, despite extremely high temperatures and minimal irrigation. The site is the lowest dryland expanse on Earth: a plain in Jordan, two kilometres northeast of the Dead Sea, and 400 metres below sea level.

A Propos D'Un Crime

January 1967 •French

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.”

Guerre sans images - Algérie, je sais que tu sais

August 2002 •Arabic

The Director Mohammed Soudani comes back to Algeria after 30 years with the photographer Michael von Graffenried to visit the Algerians he had photographed between 1991 and 2000 without them knowing it.

Hollywood in Deliblatska Pescara

February 1965 •German

Short documentary on the making of Henry Levin's Genghis Khan, which filmed on location in Yugoslavia. The final film's epic battle scenes are contrasted with the mundane reality of life on a film set.

The Desert Wagon

March 2024 •Spanish

A couple of artists travels through the Mexico desert to present their puppet show.

L'expérience biosphère : 120 jours dans le désert

March 2024 •French

Paroles d'un Prisonnier Français de l'ALN

November 2010 •French

The image of French prisoners was very often evoked in Algerian cinema and literature, but until today, no Algerian or even European report or documentary had given voice to one of these French prisoners of the war of Algeria. In the interest of truth and writing history, we set out in search of one of these French witnesses. This witness is René Rouby, prisoner of Amirouche's group for more than 114 days in 1958 in the Akfadou region in Kabylia. This is the first testimony from a French prisoner of the ALN (the National Liberation Army).

Glimpses of Morocco and Algiers

August 1951 •English

This FitzPatrick Traveltalk short visits the cities of Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakesh in Morocco, as well as the city of Algiers in Algeria.

The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting

February 1983 •French

“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.

The Hunters

January 1957 •English

An ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in 1952–53. In addition to the giraffe hunt, the film shows other aspects of !Kung life at that time, including family relationships, socializing and storytelling, and the hard work of gathering plant foods and hunting for small game.