Visualising postcolonial cultural politics in Algeria: from state cinema to cinéma d'auteur

Abstract

Born in the underground of the War of National Liberation, Algerian cinema has followed, and been closely entwined with, the country's political evolution, for the better and for the worse. As subjective pieces of testimony about the nationalist struggle, the sequels to an atrocious war, Algerian films initially provided a well meaning accompaniment to the challenging steps being taken to build a more ‘just’, more ‘social’ society, but gradually came to be liberated from the monolithic thinking of the one-party state. Since the end of the 1960s, filmmakers have taken wing in various directions, dealing with multiple preoccupations at odds with the ‘correct’ aesthetics imposed by the FLN (National Front of Liberation), the single party that dominates the state. In the past, restrictions often reflected the colonial and postcolonial authorities' concerns about the influence of cinema on the colonised – then liberated – population. For several decades, the French colonial regime and authoritarian post-independence governments held back the development of indigenous cinema. This article attempts to show that making cinema in the context of this post-independence culture involves a search for images free of one-dimensional and often derogatory stereotypes. It surveys the defining moment of Algerian postcolonial cinema history.