Abstract
In this article, the author engages with the latest film by Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Terminal Sud (2019). The article situates the film within a cultural and political context characterized by a variety of polemical discourses: these concern the relationship between cultural memory and the French colonization of Algeria, the Algerian décennie noire (1991-2002), and policies of Franco-Algerian "reconciliation" pursued by the acting French government since 2017. With reference to this immediate context, the author examines a number of political, historical, and theoretical perspectives on the nature of the "archive" before undertaking a critical analysis of Terminal Sud's aesthetic practices of spatio-temporal deterritorialization, mixing semiotic referents, and cinematic aniconism. Through this analysis, the author contends that Terminal Sud enacts a visual recreation of an immaterial Franco-Algerian archive that responds to the fragmentation and destruction suffered by its material counterparts during, and following, French colonization of Algeria in the years 1830-1962. In doing so, this article explores the potential role of visual culture as a means to express a shared Franco-Algerian consciousness.
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