Breaths and Echoes of Anticolonial Resistances
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Date
- 15:00 / Cancelled 15:00 / Sold out Sunday, 15:00
Location
Studio Centro de Arte Moderna GulbenkianPricing
10% – Cartão Gulbenkian and Cartão Gulbenkian Mais
This screening includes five short films that present different aspects of the anticolonial struggle and resistance in Algeria, but also in other territories, such as East Timor and Lebanon.
With ‘J’ai huit ans’ [I’m Eight Years Old], from 1961, Olga Poliakoff and Yann Le Masson give voice to Algerian orphans taken in by Tunisian families, who show the horror of the war that never ceases to haunt them through their drawings.
In 1957, Cécile Decugis, best known for her work as an editor, made a documentary about the Algerian refugee population in Tunisia, in order to highlight the situation of people forced to flee their villages due to colonial repression. The film was never released in France, and in 2011, Decugis revisited the footage she had filmed, re-editing it into a version she called ‘La Distribution de Pain’ [The Distribution of Bread].
The first adaptation of Henri Alleg’s book ‘La Question’ was made by Algerian film-maker Mohand Ali-Yahia in 1961. It is a graduation film shot on the premises of the East Berlin Film School (in the former GDR), in which some torture sequences seem to anticipate certain scenes from Gillo Pontecorvo’s ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966), which is also part of this cycle, or Sarah Maldoror’s ‘Monagambée’ (1969). Ali-Yahia and Maldoror were also assistants on the set of Pontecorvo’s film.
Made in 1976 by Boubaker Adjali, ‘East Timor, Island of Fear, Island of Hope’ is a documentary that shows the struggle of Fretilin, East Timor’s national liberation movement, and denounces the Indonesian repression carried out in the eastern part of the island of Timor. An Algerian journalist, photographer and filmmaker, Adjali also documented the Angolan struggle for independence, travelling clandestinely in Angola with his camera during the summer of 1970, sharing the daily lives of MPLA fighters for more than two months.
Finally, with ‘Beirut, My City’ (1982), Jocelyne Saab gives us an unforgettable account of the resistance of West Beirut, starting with the experience of civilians during the Israeli siege of the city in the summer of 1982. Her film is a subtle and pertinent essay on images in wartime that is, alas, all too relevant today.
The session includes a discussion after the screening, with programme curator Olivier Hadouchi and Chaouki Adjali. The conversation will be held in French, with simultaneous translation into Portuguese and English.
‘J'ai huit ans’ (I'm Eight Years Old), by Olga Poliakoff and Yann Le Masson
France, 1961, 16mm transferred to digital format, 10’
Documentary
Ages M/12
In French, with Portuguese and English subtitles
This short film, shot and distributed clandestinely, was banned in France for over ten years due to its denunciation of the horrors of the Algerian war through the drawings and words of Algerian orphans taken in by Tunisian families. An implacable indictment of colonial repression and violence, it offers an aesthetic proposition that is still inspiring more than 60 years on.
Credits
Directors
Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff
Yann Le Masson
Script
Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff
Yann Le Masson
René Vautier
Cinematography
Yann Le Masson
Sound
Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff
Editing
Jacqueline Meppiel
Original print
Cinémathèque de Toulouse
‘La distribution de pain’ (The Distribution of Bread), by Cécile Decugis
France, 1957, 35mm transferred to digital format, 12’
Documentary
Ages M/12
In French, with Portuguese and English subtitles
In 1957, Cécile Decugis and her friend Hédi Ben Khelifa made a short film about Algerian refugees in Tunisia. From 1960 to 1962, she was imprisoned in Paris for renting a flat in her name to FLN militants. For decades she worked as an editor on the early films of Truffaut and Godard (‘Breathless’, ‘The 400 Blows’ ) and on several films by Rohmer. In 2011, she reworked the footage from her 1957 film and added a new commentary, which she reads herself in voice-over.
Credits
Director
Cécile Decugis
Cast (Voice-over)
Cécile Decugis
Production
Cécile Decugis
Hédi Ben Khelifa
Cinematography
Cécile Decugis
Editing
Cécile Decugis
Antoine Legardinier
‘Die Frage’ (The Question), by Mohand Ali-Yahia
Algeria, Former German Democratic Republic, 1962, 35mm transferred to digital format, 14’
Documentary
Ages M/12
In German, with Portuguese and English subtitles
‘Die Frage’ is the first adaptation of Henri Alleg's famous account of the torture perpetrated by French soldiers against independence and communist activists during the Battle of Algiers. The short film was made by an Algerian student as part of his diploma course in filmmaking at the East Berlin Film School. Henri Alleg appears in person at the end of the film.
Credits
Director
Mohand Ali-Yahia
Production
Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst
‘East Timor, Island of Fear, Island of Hope’, by Boubaker Adjali
Australia, 1976, 35mm transferred to digital format, 20’
Documentary
Ages M/12
In English, with Portuguese subtitles
A historical introduction to East Timor as well as a commentary on contemporary political and military conflicts. The film includes reports from four Australian journalists killed at Balibo in October 1975 and footage of Australian Labor MP Ken Fry at the United Nations.
Credits
Producer and Director
Boubaker Adjali
Production
Timor Defense Foundation
Special thanks
Chaouki Adjali
‘Beyrouth, ma ville’ (Beirut, my City), by Jocelyne Saab
Lebanon, 1982, 16mm transferred to digital format, 30’
Documentary
Ages M/14
In French, with Portuguese and English subtitles
Franco-Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab lost her home in the summer of 1982, and participated alongside several friends in peaceful resistance to the Israeli siege of West Beirut. She considered ‘Beirut, My City’ to be the most important of her films, the one closest to her heart. Looking back after several decades, it remains a masterful reflection on images in wartime, on the daily lives and resistance of civilians under the bombs.
Credits
Director and Producer
Jocelyne Saab
Cinematography
Hassan Naamani
Editing
Philippe Gosselet
Copyrights
Association des amis de Jocelyne Saab
Special thanks
Porto/Post/Doc: Film & Media Festival and DocLisboa International Film Festival
/
Songs, images, dances and sounds: acts for liberation
In dialogue with the exhibition ‘Zineb Sedira. Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go’, this programme brings together a constellation of anti-colonial and anti-racist films, dealing with cultural and political resistance, and the inventiveness of the freedom fights. More info
Biographies
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Chaouki Adjali
Chaouki Adjali was born in Algeria and lived through the final years of French colonialism, which remain vivid in his memory. He is the younger brother of Boubaker Adjali, and his interest in photography arose through the influence of his brother’s work. In the early years of Algeria’s independence, he began preserving Boubaker’s memories and the events he captured in photographs. After his brother’s death in 2007, he published a book of Boubaker’s photos, inviting historians to write about his work. This book, entitled ‘Boubaker Adjali l’Africain’, was released in 2023 by Éditions Otium. He also recovered his brother’s photographic archives (over 8,000 negatives) and film archives (4 documentaries), and digitized his documentary De la Terre à la Lune [From the Earth to the Moon], which was selected for the exhibition PRÉSENCES ARABES at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 2024.
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Olivier Hadouchi
Olivier Hadouchi (Paris, 1972) is an independent film curator and researcher based in Paris. He studied Literature (Sorbonne) and Cinema (PhD, Sorbonne Nouvelle). He has published texts in academic journals such as ‘Third Text’ (on William Klein’s ‘The Pan-African Festival of Algiers’) and ‘CinémAction’ (on Latin American militant cinema or on certain Algerian and Lebanese films). He has curated film and video programmes for several venues, including film festivals (CorsicaDoc); Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (‘Tricontinental – Cinema, Utopia and Internationalism’, 2017); Jeu de Paume, Paris (‘Echoes of Algeria: Resistances’, in dialogue with the exhibition by Zineb Sedira, 2019); Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon; and Münster (in the context of an exhibition by Katia Kameli).
Image credit: © Cyril Caine
Programme
15:00 / Introduction
15:05 / ‘J’ai huit ans‘ [I Am Eight Years Old], by Olga Poliakoff and Yann Le Masson
15:15 / ‘La distribution de pain’ [The Distribution of Bread], by Cécile Decugis
15:27 / ‘Die Frage‘ [The Question], by Mohand Ali-Yahia
15:41 / ‘East Timor, Island of Fear, Island of Hope’, by Boubaker Adjali
16:01 / ‘Beyrouth, ma ville’ [Beirut, My City], by Jocelyne Saab
16:35 / Talk
17:00 / Closing
Support
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.
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