Larmes De Sang

René Vautier, le maquisard à la caméra

Portrait of the Algerian singer and composer Kamal Hamadi (husband of the singer Noura). Performer, musician, conductor, lyricist, author and composer, he is considered today as the witness par excellence of Algerian artistic action of the 20th century. The film received the Golden Olivier for best documentary 2010 at the Tizi-Ouzou Amazigh Film Festival in Algeria.

The SAS (Section Administrative Spécialisée) were created in 1956 by the French army during the Algerian war to pacify "the natives". During the day, the SAS were used as treatment centres and at night as torture centres, in order to crush the Algerian resistance. The SAS were inhabited by French soldiers and auxiliaries (harkis, goumiers) and their families. At independence in 1962, a few families of auxiliaries stayed on; the vacant buildings were occupied by families of martyrs awaiting the better days promised by the new Algeria. 46 years later, the SAS at Laperrine, in the Bouira region, still exists, a unique place inhabited by people who have taken refuge there. They have been joined by farmers fleeing the terrorism of the 90s. They all live as best they can in a place they did not choose, suffering the consequences of war.

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

L'Homme de L'Atlas

Séfar (in Arabic: سيفار) is an ancient city in the heart of the Tassili n'Ajjer mountain range in Algeria, more than 2,400 km south of Algiers and very close to the Libyan border. Séfar is the largest troglodyte city in the world, with several thousand fossilized houses. Very few travelers go there given its geographical remoteness and especially because of the difficulties of access to the site. The site is full of several paintings, some of which date back more than 12,000 years, mostly depicting animals and scenes of hunting or daily life which testify that this hostile place has not always been an inhabited desert. Local superstition suggests that the site is inhabited by djins, no doubt in connection with the strange paintings found on the site.

By meeting his former comrades in combat, the film follows the journey of Yves Mathieu, anti-colonialist in Black Africa then lawyer for the FLN. When Algeria became independent, he drafted the Decrees of March on vacant property and self-management, promulgated in 1963 by Ahmed Ben Bella. Yves Mathieu's life is punctuated by his commitments in an Algeria that was then called "The Lighthouse of the Third World". The director, who is his daughter, returns to the conditions of his death in 1966.

Hier, aujourd'hui et demain

Algériennes, Trente ans après

Algeria, summer 1962, eight hundred thousand French people left their native land in a tragic exodus. But 200,000 of them decided to attempt the adventure of independent Algeria. Over the following decades, political developments would push many of these pieds-noirs into exile towards France. But some never left. Germaine, Adrien, Cécile, Guy, Jean-Paul, Marie-France, Denis and Félix, Algerians of European origin, are among them. Some have Algerian nationality, others do not. Some speak Arabic, others do not. They are the last witnesses to the little-known history of these Europeans who remained out of loyalty to an ideal, a taste for adventure and an unconditional love for a land where they were born, despite all the ups and downs that the free Algeria in full construction had to go through.

Algérie, la vie toujours

A documentary road movie with René Vautier In the aftermath of Algeria's independence, René Vautier, a militant filmmaker, considered "the dad" of Algerian cinema, set up the cine-pops. We recreate with him the device of itinerant projections and we travel the country in ciné-bus (Algiers, Béjaïa, Tizi Ouzou, Tébessa) to hear the voices of the spectators on the political situation, youth and living conditions of men and Of women today.

These are the first images shot in the ALN maquis, camera in hand, at the end of 1956 and in 1957. These war images taken in the Aurès-Nementchas are intended to be the basis of a dialogue between French and Algerians for peace in Algeria, by demonstrating the existence of an armed organization close to the people. Three versions of Algeria in Flames are produced: French, German and Arabic. From the end of the editing, the film circulates without any cuts throughout the world, except in France where the first screening takes place in the occupied Sorbonne in 1968. Certain images of the film have circulated and are found in films, in particular Algerian films. Because of the excitement caused by this film, he was forced to go into hiding for 25 months. After the declaration of independence, he founded the first Algerian Audiovisual Center.

Il Était Une Fois Cheb Hasni

An experimental essay film about terrorism, media, violence and globalisation. Three infotainment news broadcasts - a rollercoaster, a hijacking, and an influencer - are soundtracked by pulsating experimental electronics that push the psychic residue of a post war-on-terror world out of the unconscious and onto the screen. Capitalism, imperialism, desire; all three are implicated in a nihilism that has seeped from the news into the social psyche.

In an age when women were incapable of joining the artistic dialogue, Lilias Trotter managed to win the favour of celebrated critics.

A sublime documentary on childhood and bereavement that’s one of several shorts the filmmaker completed while working in Algeria for Georges Derocles’s company Les Studios Africa, for whom he would shortly make his breakthrough feature The Olive Trees of Justice.

It is the evocation of a life as brief as it is dense. An encounter with a dazzling thought, that of Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist of West Indian origin, who will reflect on the alienation of black people. It is the evocation of a man of reflection who refuses to close his eyes, of the man of action who devoted himself body and soul to the liberation struggle of the Algerian people and who will become, through his political commitment, his fight, and his writings, one of the figures of the anti-colonialist struggle. Before being killed at the age of 36 by leukemia, on December 6, 1961. His body was buried by Chadli Bendjedid, who later became Algerian president, in Algeria, at the Chouhadas cemetery (cemetery of war martyrs ). With him, three of his works are buried: “Black Skin, White Masks”, “L’An V De La Révolution Algérien” and “The Wretched of the Earth”.

This film is the product of a seven-year research journey on the popular insurrection of December 1960 in Algeria and the failure of the counter-insurrection, thanks to the Wretched of the Earth themselves.

Daniel Timsit, l’Algérien