Artists’ Talk on Thursday Night at 5 PM
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When Loss is the Way to Find Love
An intriguing film about shared memories, identities and what it all means.
When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories, however it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.
Who: ALC, ALIF & university students
When: Friday February 24 at 3pm
Where: ALC Room Six
Strength Under Duress
Two films chronicle the effects of sectarian violence on the lives of individuals and the determination of the protagonists to keep their lives intact.
Nineteen year old Danny Flynn is imprisoned for his involvement with the IRA in Belfast. He leaves behind his family and his fourteen year old girlfriend, Maggie Hamill. Fourteen years later, Danny is released from prison and returns to his old working class neighborhood to resume his life as a boxer, fighting and opening a boxing club training aspiring young boxers. Maggie has since married Danny’s best friend, who is also imprisoned for his IRA activities. Although he has not denounced the IRA or denigrated his IRA colleagues, Danny has decided to live a life free of political violence. His boxing club is non-sectarian, open to both Catholics and Protestants. Language : English
Who: ALIF students
When: Friday February 24 at 6pm
Where: ALIF Riad
Directed by Yamina Bachir, this French film chronicles the life of Rachida, a young divorcee who lives with her mother and works as a teacher at a local school. Her life is turned upside-down, however, when she goes to work without wearing a veil over her face. This leaves her prey to a band of terrorists, who promptly kidnap her and instruct one of their members to bomb the school. Despite being left for dead, Rachida manages to survive and take refuge in the country side.
Language : Arabic with English subtitles
Who: ALIF students
When: Saturday February 25 & Sunday February 26 at 6pm
Where: ALIF Riad
Back to Normal Soon
The ALC Fezbook blog is having some technical issues and will be back up and running with all your film and events news very soon.
The Importance of Speaking Out
This week’s ALIF movies feature the consequences of standing up to authority in various forms – whether that is the government or the father of the family.
FAIR GAME
This recent movie is based on a true story of what happened to a CIA officer when her husband dared to question the US government’s version of their motivation to go to war in Iraq. Valerie (Naomi Watts) works for the CIA’s Counter Proliferation Division and leads an investigation into the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Valerie’s husband is diplomat Joe Wilson, played by Sean Penn, who is also drawn into the investigation. When the administration ignores his findings and uses the issue to support the call to war, Joe writes a New York Times editorial outlining his negative conclusions and igniting a firestorm of controversy, which has serious consequences for the couple and their family. Language: English with English sub-titles.
Who: ALIF students
When: Friday February 10 at 6pm
Where: ALIF Riad
ATASH
A family of five, their two goats and donkey live in the middle of nowhere far from their village home. They earn a meagre living by producing and selling charcoal, made from the surrounding trees. The father and son are the only ones who ever return to their native village. The mother and her two daughters have not returned since the day they abandoned home, 10 years ago. One day the father decides to provide running water for the family by illegally diverting water onto their land. The three women recoil from the idea but the teenage son obeys – anything to be allowed to continue attending school. The water surging through the pipe parallels the surging resentment the family feels towards the father. The newly free-flowing water on their land re-awakens the instinctive desire for freedom they have been repressing all these years. Language – Arabic with English subtitles.
Who: ALIF students
When: Saturday February 11 & Sunday February 12 at 6pm
Where: ALIF Riad
Famous Writer Shows His Human Side
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film. A young Shakespeare, out of ideas and short of cash, meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays. The story is fiction, though several of the characters are based on real people. Shakespeare in Love won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow), and Best Supporting Actress (for Judi Dench).
Who: ALC, ALIF & university students
When: Friday February 10 at 3pm
Where: ALC Room Six
Women’s Mirror Stage Three
Join the ALC-ALIF Photography Club on Saturday for further work on the Women’s Mirror exhibition.
Who: ALC, ALIF & university students and anyone keen on photography
You will need to reserve your place by Friday, as transport is limited
When: Meet at Hotel Batha on Saturday February 4 at 9.30 AM
Stories of the Self and Others
Cultural encounters and contrasts are a major theme in this month’s selection of books, by Kaoutar Bakhchane. You can find them all at the ALC-ALIF Bookshop.
Title: Salvation Army
Author: Abdellah Taia
Price: 125dhs
Abdellah Taia’s autobiographical novel is a major significant contribution in postcolonial Moroccan literature. Salvation Army is a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of Taïa’s life with complete disclosure about his childhood in a poor family in the city of Sale and his adolescence years in Tangiers. The first-person narrator also reveals his experiences as a student in Geneva. The book has not received the attention it deserves by Moroccan critics in relation to the growth of postcolonial autobiography as a literary genre which Mohamed Choukri initiated in the 1970s.
Title: Mogador
Author: Alberto Ruy Sanchez
Price: 100 dhs
Set in an imaginary walled city off the coast of Morocco, Mogador traces the days and nights of Fatma, a young woman who finds herself suddenly seized by desire. As she wanders the city’s maze of erotic pleasures, she encounters other desiring bodies and the desperate worlds those desires create. Here is a vital fusion of Latin America magical realism with Arabic geometric and mystical imagery, written in a style the author calls a “prose of intensities.”
Title: Arabian Jazz
Author: Diana Abu-Jaber
Price: 125 dhs
This fictional work traces the occurrences of an immigrant Jordanian family and their integration into American society. The tale of Matusseum (the father), his two daughters, and his bizarre, aggressive sister (Fatima) and brother-in-law (Zaeed) examines the roles of immigrants in America and the means in which they contribute to the larger social and economic sphere. Abu-Jaber’s novel, Arabian Jazz, allows an insider’s look at the complexity of cultural identity and the process an immigrant, or a child of an immigrant, must go through in order to discover their most natural identity.
Title: Cities of Salt
Author: Abd Al-Rahman Munif
Price: 165 dhs
Banned in several Middle Eastern countries, this novel records the encounter between Americans and Arabs in an unnamed Gulf emirate in the 1930s. As oil exploration begins, the destruction of an oasis community amounts to “a breaking off, like death that nothing and no one could ever heal.” The promise inherent in the creation of a city divided into Arab and American sectors provides the novel’s most striking revelation: here not merely two cultures, but two ages, meet and stand apart. Alternatively amused and bewildered by the Americans and their technological novelties, the Arabs sense in their accommodation to modernity the betrayal of their own traditions.
Title: States and Women’s Rights
Author: Mounira M. Charrad
Price: 225 dhs
Mounira M. Charrad analyzes the distinctive nature of Islamic legal codes by placing them in the larger context of the different historical bases of state power in various societies. Charrad argues that many analysts miss what is going on in Islamic societies because they fail to appreciate the logic of the kin-based model of social and political life. She examines the fundamental features of the kin-based model of politics, which she contrasts with the Western class-centered model. In a skillful synthesis, she shows the links between the logic of Islamic legal codes, kin-based political power, and the subordination of women.
Title: Granada
Author: Radwa Ashour
Price: 210 dhs
The novel follows the family of Abu Jaafar the bookbinder – his wife, widowed daughter-in-law, her two children, and his two apprentices – as they witness Christopher Columbus and his entourage in a triumphant parade featuring exotic plants, animals, and human captives from the New World. Embedded in the narrative is the preparation for the marriage of Saad, one of the apprentices, and Saleema, Abu Jaafar’s granddaughter – which is elegantly revealed in a number of parallel scenes. As the new rulers of Granada confiscate books and officials burn the collected volumes, Abu Jaafur quietly moves his rich library out of town. Radwa Ashour revisits Muslim history in Spain and sheds light on a number of atrocities committed in the name of ethnic and religious fanaticism.
Movies at ALIF Riad
The Blind Side
This movie, for which star Sandra Bullock won the best actress Oscar, features a rich, white, conservative, Christian, Republican family who take in an abandoned black teenager. Through their loving efforts, they help this teenager get through a private Christian school, become a football star, and get a scholarship at the University of Mississippi. This is based on the real-life story of football star, Baltimore Raven Michael Oher, though not every part is accurate. The title, The Blind Side, refers to his on-field position, left tackle, which protects the quarterback’s blind side. The film is well-shot, well-paced, and will easily move people in a positive way.
Who: ALIF students
When: Friday February 3 at 6pm
Where: ALIF Riad
The Hunger
This is a cinematic masterpiece produced by the revolutionary 60s generation inspired by the Novel prize Laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s folk myths. The film shows the rise of the a ruler and his corruption through power. Set in 1887, it clearly analyses the present. It was directed by the uncompromising Ali Badrakhan. Arabic with English sub-titles.
Who: ALIF students
When: Saturday February 4 & Sunday February 5 at 6pm
Where: ALIF Riad
A Day with ALC-ALIF Photo Club
Last Saturday morning, the ALC-ALIF Photo Club headed for the hills and ALC-ALIF cultural co-ordinator Suzanna Clarke went with them.
We met at Batha in the Fez Medina on Saturday at 9.30 AM. Club organiser Omar Chennafi had rented a van and there were last minute adjustments to be made when more people than expected turned up – someone who had offered an additional car failed to show. But another member provided a set of wheels, and we were soon on our way.
The ALC-ALIF Photography Club Photo: Omar Chennafi
The Photo Club’s main aim last Saturday was to connect with a number of Moroccan women who had agreed to be part of the Women’s Mirror project: an exhibition to be held on International Women’s Day on March 8. The exhibition will feature photographs both by the local women, using disposable cameras, and portraits of them taken by Photo Club members, in what is planned to be an unusual and rewarding exchange of perspectives.
Our first stop was on the outskirts of Fez, where one of the participants resided. Behind a brick factory and some olive groves lived seventeen year old Kaoutar. The women of the Photo Club were welcomed warmly by the women of her family. Kaoutar said she was keen to be involved in the exhibition, and was given a disposable camera. The Moroccan Arabic vocabulary of the ALIF students got a work out as they interviewed her.
Kaoutar pours tea Photo: Suzanna Clarke
Henrietta Wormal, 21, an ALIF student from the UK, said she was surprised to learn that Kaoutar had left school at 12. “Doing a project like this helps you to see different realities,” she said.
ALIF student Henrietta Wormal Photo: Suzanna Clarke
Then it was off to Sefrou, an hour and a half’s drive from Fez. There we met with three local women: an English teacher with a cute six month old daughter, and two of her friends. All were friendly and relaxed, which made interviewing them about their lives and photographing them a pleasant experience.
One of the local participants is interviewed Photo: Omar Chennafi
After a delicious lunch of chicken, chips and brochettes at a local cafe, the group headed back to Fez; stopping on the way for a quick lesson in landscape photography from Omar, who spoke about the importance of seeing common scenes in unusual ways.
Omar explains landscape techniques Photo: Suzanna Clarke
Photo Club member, Albdelali El Kassass, 22, who is a third year Cultural Studies student, says, “I have learned lots of new techniques since I have been coming to the Club, like how to use a digital camera…I think projects like the Women’s Mirror exhibition are important, because it helps me to see the story behind her smile or sadness.”
Photo Club member Abdelali ElKassass Photo: Suzanna Clarke
Photo: Abdelali ElKassass
Photo: Tariq
We returned to Fez mid-afternoon, weary, but satisfied with the results of our day. Regardless of where the ALC-ALIF Photo Club members come from; what type of cameras they have or the extent of their photographic skills, everyone appeared to enjoy themselves. As well as learning new skills, they had the opportunity to interact with other members and subjects and find out more about ways of life they may not have previously been exposed to.
If you are considering coming along to Photo Club sessions, I highly recommend it. Watch this blog or posters at the Center for details.
Photo above: Henrietta Wormal