Franco-Arab Dialogues in/between French, Maghrebi-French, and Maghrebi Cinema(s)

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1. I am using the term “Maghrebi-French” as opposed to either “beur,” which has become problematic, or “Franco-Maghrebi,” which is fundamentally ambiguous. Although I am drawing on Maghrebi cinemas as examples of Arab cinemas, I recognize that the term Maghrebi includes other populations—Kabyl, Berber, Jewish, pied noir, etc. 2. Other films of the 2000s differ in tone and in outcome: in La Faute à Voltaire, the Arab migrant is eventually deported, while in Chouchou, a Utopian multicultural France is shown ready to welcome a cross-dressing, gay male Arab. But both engage audiences in a dialogue regarding the need for tolerance and acceptance of others, emphasising the conviviality that can arise from intercultural relationships (but ignoring the possibility of the main protagonist being a practising Muslim). 3. They include: L’Autre monde, La Fille de Keltoum, Un aller simple, Les Chemins de l’oued, Exils, Tenja, and Il était une fois dans l’oued. 4. In L’Autre monde and Les Chemins de l’oued, the Maghrebi-French traveler is eventually killed by Islamic fundamentalists; in La Fille de Keltoum, she cannot accept the way women are treated in the Arab/Berber sex/gender system. In Exils, however, the pied noir traveler and his Maghrebi-French girlfriend are literally entranced by Sufi mysticism, and appear to find some sort of reconciliation with their past. 5. Various 1990s films denounce the wearing of the veil (Douce France) and Islamic fundamentalism (100% Arabica); Abdelkrim Bahloul's La Nuit du destin provides a sympathetic portrayal of Islamic faith in France. 6. Bensalah's other feature films are Le Ciel, les oiseaux … et ta mère, Le Raïd, and Big City. 7. Other such films include Le Soleil assassiné, an account of the encounter between Algerian youths and the poet Jean Sénac, set in the 1960s; and Bab El Web, which centers on the relationship between a French woman traveler and her young Algerian hosts (see Higbee); in André Téchiné's Loin, set in Tangiers, the Moroccan character has a secondary role.