Themes of female imprisonment and rebellion: M.A. Tazi's film Badis

Abstract

This article explores the movie Badis, in which Tazi gives the audience his own representation of the complexity of Moroccan women's experience. The film highlights not only women's oppression under institutionalised male dominance, but also their liberation in terms of their pursuit of agency and self-definition. The article analyses the way the film makes space for women's agency and subjectivity, and the extent to which it refuses and subverts the objectifying patriarchal gaze as well as the colonial gaze of the Spanish. Furthermore, it examines the way the film offers narratives of mobility and transgression which challenge imprisoning fixed identities. The article draws connections between form, gender and political commentary and raises questions about Tazi's filming of Badis. To what extent is Tazi implicated in patriarchal discourse? To what extent is his gaze gendered? Is the camera gaze always gendered or can a male director as sympathetic as Tazi step out of this gendering mode of filmmaking and use it instead as an instrument of female liberation?