The state of Moroccan cinema today by Fouad Zouirik

Written by 

Fouad Zouirik 

I am writing to you right now from a cafe in the center of Amsterdam Airport. I can not wait to get home to write comfortably. I was on the plane while I was coming back from Istanbul. I read a lot of articles and saw a lot of figures gathered specifically to find out the fate of Moroccan cinema in recent years.

Moroccan cinema does not progress as some claim but delay, or at least let's say that its career has stopped precisely since the strict assumption of Fassi Fihri management of the Moroccan Film Center, not talking about films but talking about the sector, about the system as a whole, now  it has passed four years since the appointment of Fassi Fassi Successor to Noueddine Sail . Al The failure of the Justice and Development Party (Islamic party) to manage many sectors has also had a disastrous impact on the cinema sector, which was proceeding smoothly and steadily in the direction of its former director. The new director is well aware that his reign will be devastating and certainly this was the intention and purpose of his appointment originally. Everyone knows the hostility of the Moroccan "Islamic brothers" to film and art in general.

In 2013, an attempt was made to create 350 to 400  cinema theatres over the next ten years. Half the time has now passed. How many halls have been established from 400 public halls? Nothing, of course, but even some of the Moroccan festivals that we were proud of before others have declined and become a non-existent, many important initiatives and agreements were taken and concluded in the previous era did not apply despite the passage of years, Hope to develop the sector? Are they actually downloaded and exploited? I doubt ... Instead of exerting effort and investing the gains of the previous era and developing it between the actions and policies of adolescent and improvisational director of the new, every time creates a fuss of nothing, but the structure of the Cinematic Center itself was not delivered from this improvisation Unfortunately, even the films that succeed in our country remains successful, are confined to its makers and has nothing to do with the center.

The professionals and filmmakers working in the sector are often complaining and criticizing the policy of the center, which is dedicated by its president, but all this resentment takes place behind the scenes without taking a proactive step forward to stand in front of these barriers. They do not dare to unify their entities and create a counter-power to confront them. All they do is waste their energies and efforts. In side battles against each other, even those who criticize him behind the curtain and rush to shake him publicly, bowing the head in submission and humiliation, how does one dare not even to impress on a post that criticizes the situation to take a stand or revolution against the current film policy and whenever I met him encouraged you What you write and said to you by the letter that you speak in his tongue and justified you not to interact with the justification of films, although you did not ask him originally and does not concern his mark or admiration because telling the truth is a duty and does not need thanks from anybody, of course there are those who direct their arrows to the Director of the Center and policies but unfortunately most of them seek to achieve personal goals have nothing to do with the public interest.

Four years have passed on the reign of FAssi fahri still in the throne of cinema in Morocco and the outcome is that we are still to this day scribbled on the legacy of |Noureddibe  Sayel era, thankfully, but we have cleared a lot of his steps and gains in the eraser of the current president, I do not want to make a comparison between the person of the current director and the former until we stand on our hands today. The comparison will inevitably be unfair and humiliating, if we were in a country that respects art and cinema and knows the value of the latter, which in our time became one of the most powerful and powerful weapons, we saw Fassi Fihri as the director general of the Moroccan Cinema Center in front of our parliament to present its outcome and to hold accountable for every action done , but unfortunately this did not happen and will never happen. I do not know Noureddine Sayel and I never met him - although i will be  honored to meet him - as I do not know FassiFahri whom i  did not meet him too, but the numbers and acquisitions speak on their behalf, even their appearance in the programs and media meetings shows you the huge difference between the level of this and that, Clearly the cause of the current crisis in this sector.

 I want anyone to see that I am wrong in what I claim to present to the gains achieved by this sector in the era of its strict director .

who is to blame in Moroccan cinema industry ?

  

Written by Abdellah Zerouali

Who are we ?

Yes dear colleague and friend Driss Chouika. You are right to ask the question. I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing your play and it is a gap to fill. And if you will allow me, I ask myself the same question. To know who we are. You, me, and many other victims of a system that crushes us. You accused, rightly or wrongly, two individuals in charge of cinema and television. Do you really think they have their hands free and that they are the real decision makers? In addition, do you really believe that they are the only ones responsible for our failure? Criticism is good, but self-criticism is better.

According to the CCM's catalog, 100 filmmakers hold the professional identity card (CIP). However, those who have benefited or who still enjoy the favors of the help fund commissions can be counted on the fingertips. Once on the left hand and twice on the right one. Nothing to do with politics? Of course yes ! We do not want a social cinema that disturbs. We prefer to finance with public money a prestigious cinema that masks social realities and is better suited to the taste of our distinguished guests. Believe me, Driss Chouika, I am older than you in age and older in the profession. I have seen directors on the CCM and TVM. Some were good only to travel to Cairo to bring in singers to animate our national and annual festivities. An approach that Noureddine Sail did not share at the time (the 70s and 80s) because he said exactly this: "Ancient Greece had two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, but in Morocco there are every year ".

 No, my dear friend, we must not reject the responsibility for our misfortunes solely on the "guardians". We have our share of responsibility in the weight that falls on the skull (mine is slippery as you know it). Everyone goes it alone and, despite the existence of our unions and our professional chambers, we are unable to form a common front and speak with one voice.  !

Nadira ,a smart cinema by kamal Kamal

writte by  Fouad Souiba

At the world premiere of Kamal Kamal's latest opus "

Nadira", one had to be provided with his political, cinematographic and musical knowledge to honor this noble and highly aesthetic work. And for good reason! The author of "The Moroccan Symphony" gave us a very beautiful film, where he noted a number of artistic challenges widely assumed. On the photo album, at the end of the screening, Mahmoud Hamida, the Egyptian star, struggles hard to congratulate the only film actress: Jihane Kamal. Exceptional in the title role of "Nadira", Jihane, like his dad, has greatly raised the challenge of playing an atypical character, condemned to life, he is drowning under the weight of the prison world.

And this is where the business of the inmate, who must survive the vagaries of incarceration and the impossible fulfillment of her dream to flee, gets tough.

Kamal Kamal succeeds in bringing a narrative made of dissolving registers and antinomic blocks, that of combining the dream world, filmed in computer-generated images, with Nadira's dark incarceral life. A technical feat that is accomplished naturally in a good state of mind, since the author uses intelligent narrative subterfuges to ensure the adequate likelihood and legitimacy necessary for this atypical marriage. And this brings back to the use of all the apparatus and other narrative tools of which the dream, the animated image, the metaphor and the ellipse, to the point where the dream returns to the reality in reality and vice versa the real in the dream, with a density that has rarely been seen to work so well in a register that carries so many antagonistic and heteroclite styles.
Thus, the challenge of the closed vase, melodrama to an actor and only one, the prison world, social injustice, human rights, off-screen, sound off, (the challenge) is it a nice pirouette in the paying strategy which is the salutary recourse to dream magic to compensate for the absence of large spaces.
And as the director of "Sotto Voce" cinema has all the keys to push the borders to the end, the dream is then the fatal weapon to break the walls and open on these beautiful Casablanca nights since the dungeon of Nadira .

The sauce takes and we are flanked by characters as extravagant as imaginary: white horses in a celestial race or a musician in interpretation of a classic masterpiece in front of a dense crowd, without forgetting this bird symbol of freedom and this confidant cat and companion of the prisoner's fight. All that passes through the unconscious of Nadira while she conjures her fate becomes accessible through this window of the dungeon opened on a magic sky where all the miracles are fulfilled. Especially that of the prisoner Nadira who speaks to the sky and the characters she loves to meet in the firmament of Casablanca from her cell. A cell that crosses beautiful references to Daddy's cinema: George Méliès and Al Jolsen in particular, without omitting the appearance of the slice of one of the giants at the very beginning of the film: Orson Welles.

Kamal Kamal signs a clever film, for the story of which he found the subtle ingredients to invent a suitable language that befits such an adventure to insane risks. With bravery he braves all the dangers incurred, since he chooses the most difficult, and gets out unscathed.

Corruption in the Moroccan cinema

Written by Driss Chouika

Moroccan cinema is retreating  and it does not go to the way it must do .This is a confirmation by the chamber of producers in Morocco .It is true that the center  of Moroccan cinema, known of CCM organizes cinema, develops its laws and wishes with great efforts to produce more qualified films that can be exploited and distributed everywhere in the world  ,but apparently it has failed so far because the head of the center has no clear strategy to promote cinema nationally ,writes Driss chouika  ,filmmaker and a member of the chamber of producers in Morocco .He foresees a dark future of Moroccan cinema because of corruption ,fraud and clientelism .

JERONIMO  strikes his latest coup with the "stinging and stumbling" solidarity of his cronies of the most corrupt commission in the history of the National Film Production Fund since 1980! For the last session of their mandate, they have chosen to ensure their dealers by a few hundred thousand dirhams, as the 700,000 dirhams "generously" given by a producer "comic" to benefit from the support of two mediocre films during two consecutive sessions, the 400,000 dirhams guaranteed by another producer more "generous", and the multiple cases that insistent rumor reports constantly during the last four years .

Still in the total denial of the regulations in force! Normal. When a mere teacher  searching for "fresh lambs" secretively with his assistant called TOROS, a  fraudelent "script-doctor", a false moviegoer, is raised to the rank of "great critic" and even "film teacher" in a higher institute, we can only expect a similar result! This is successful because it fits perfectly with Sarim Fassi Fihri's four-year-old policy of demolishing national cinema in revenge for the filmmakers, most of whom did not support him in his "businessman" fight against the former director of CCM!

Corrupt juries, corrupt commissions, the exclusion of professionals from any consultation in the management of the sector ... Normal that this leads to a clear regression of the national cinema. And the future is even more compromised! And to say that some professionals are the devil's advocate defending the director and having the minister assume all the responsibility, as if it was he who, through his corrupt management for four years, was at the origin of the disaster!

  JERONIMO  is the corrupted dealer who deals between the juries of reading scripts and filmmakers.
"fresh lambs" are beginners in filmmaking looking for National Film Production Fund.