Regards D'en Face - Alger(2003)

Ali in Wonderland(fr)

Ali in Wonderland unveils the condition of immigrant workers in Paris in the 1970s. It is a cry of anger against exploitation and racism, uncompromisingly raising the role of the French state, the media, capitalism, and colonization in this system of domination that crushes those who suffer it. In this experimental essay on the condition of Algerian migrants in Giscard's France in the mid-1970s, every aesthetic choice has a precise and legible political motivation and gives body and voice to a figure completely absent from the experimental cinema of the time: that of the immigrant worker. Abouda is one of the children of immigrants seen in the film, and not a simple activist serving a cause, which is why the emotion of her experimental gesture, which she throws in the viewer's face, springs from a ferocity inscribed in her body, from an insatiable anger that inhabits her gaze.

贼德(de)

The Young Girl and Hell(fr)

Erotic drama from France featuring beautiful Florence Guerin as a teenager who is switched in by a writer her mom allow us to move around in with them for the summer. The mom would love to get it on because of the writer not comprehending that he's being seduced by her child.

Elvis Presley: Prince from Another Planet(en)

Prince From Another Planet takes its title from a New York Times headline that accompanied its rave review of the King of Rock 'n' Roll's four sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden (80,000 tickets sold), the weekend of Friday through Sunday, June 9-11, 1972.

Overprotected Kahoko: 2018 Love & Dream(ja)

Set one year after drama series "Overprotected Kahoko." Kahoko is busy running her daycare center "Kahoko House" and also doing housework. Things at work and home are not going smoothly. "Kahoko House" is in financial difficulties and she isn't very good with housework. Her relationship with her husband Hajime is troubled and his career as a painter has been unsuccessful to date. Can Kahoko turn things around?

Water Wars(en)

Catastrophic war, destroyed ecosystem, brink of extinction. War for the most valuable treasure of the time: water.

The Process(en)

This film by Stan Brakhage investigates the process of memory and thought by melting a series of images and a field of color. The positive-negative flickering graphs a sort of shutter-window all over the matter of the vision. Jittery flocks of space are interweaving as pieces of language in a scant illumination, whereas the process of thought is sheared in fuzzy transience.

A Hand Cuffed Passenger(zh)

The Oedipus Project(en)

The Oedipus Project is an innovative new digital initiative by Theater of War Productions that will present acclaimed actors performing scenes from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King as a catalyst for powerful, healing online conversations about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon diverse communities throughout the world. Sophocles’ ancient play, written and performed in 429 BC during the time of a plague that killed one-third of the Athenian population, is a timeless story of arrogant leadership, ignored prophecy, and a pestilence that ravages the city of Thebes. At the time the play was first performed, the audience would have been reeling in the wake of a pestilence and its economic, political, and social aftermath. Seen through this lens Oedipus the King appears to have been a powerful public health tool for helping Athenians communalize the trauma of the plague, through a story that is as relevant now as it was in its own time.

Almost Elvis(en)

Almost Elvis is a searing documentary that chronicles and attempts to explain the cult of personality that is the Elvis impersonator. Filmmakers tail a handful of Elvis impersonators from around the country who are all vying to win the 1999 Elvis World Championship in -- where else? -- Memphis, Tennessee.

Ramona(xx)

On a seemingly normal evening, a young girl has the misfortune of encountering the wrong people. For her, this turns into a nightmare in which she is not even sure if she will survive the night...

Old Mother Riley, MP(en)

Old Mother Riley loses her laundry job and then battles her ex-boss in a parliamentary election.

Behind the Britcoms: From Script to Screen(en)

Moira Brooker and Philip Bretherton (Judith and Alastair from As Time Goes By (1992)) host this behind-the-scenes look at the work of the writers behind many of our favorite "Britcoms" (British situation comedies), revealing how their ideas make it to the screen.

Nacos vs. narcos(en)

Mexican feature film

Fire!(en)

When a young musician and his wife become witness of a bank robbery they get in the midst of a political conspiracy with the risk of losing their lives.

Pirita(en)

Mexican feature film

Zinet, Algiers, Happiness(fr)

Who remembers Mohamed Zinet? In the eyes of French spectators who reserve his face and his frail silhouette, he is simply the “Arab actor” of French films of the 1970s, from Yves Boisset to Claude Lelouch. In Algeria, he's a completely different character... A child of the Casbah, he is the brilliant author of a film shot in the streets of Algiers in 1970, Tahya Ya Didou. Through this unique work, Zinet invents a new cinema, tells another story, shows the Algerians like never before. In the footsteps of his elder, in the alleys of the Casbah or on the port of Algiers, Mohammed Latrèche will retrace the story of Tahya Ya Didou and its director.

Raï Story: From Cheikha Rimitti to Cheba Djenet(ar)

Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.

Divoké kmeny Etiopie(cs)

Les Mains Libres(fr)

In 1964, Algeria, just two years after the end of the war of independence, found itself catapulted into new contradictions, a still rural territory which responded to the modernity brought by the revolution. Filmed during the winter of 1964-1965 by the young director Ennio Lorenzini, it is the first international Algerian production which paints a rare portrait in color of a multifaceted nation, far from the simplistic vision created by the press and the French army. Produced by Casbah Film, Les Mains Libres (initially titled Tronc De Figuier) bears witness to the stigmata of colonization and the future of free Algeria throughout the Algerian territory and reveals the richness of its landscapes and the diversity of its traditions . The documentary, using the aesthetics of militant cinema of the time, is made up of four scenes: Sea and Desert, The Struggle, The Earth, Freedom.

U.S. Route 101, de Seattle à la Californie(fr)

Aleph(es)

Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, when Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward between 1953 and 1956(ar)

1953, colonized Algeria. Fanon, a young black psychiatrist is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. He was putting his theories of ‘Institutional Psychotherapy’ into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algies School of Psychiatry, while a war broke out in his own wards.

Sawt Echaâb(ar)

“La Voix du Peuple,” composed of archival photographs by René Vauthier and others, exposes the root causes of the armed conflict of the Algerian resistance. Participating in a war of real images against French colonial propaganda, these images aimed to show the images that the occupier had censored or distorted, by showing the extortions of the French occupation army: torture, arrests and arbitrary executions, napalm bombings, roundabout fires, erasing entire villages from the map, etc. This is what the French media described as a “pacification campaign”.

Abd El-Kader(fr)

Illustrated with archival photographs, animations and live action, this film explores the history and historical and spiritual heritage of Emir Abd El-Kader. Algerian leader of the 19th century, was admired by Abraham Lincoln and celebrated to this day by the Red Cross as a great humanitarian. Emir Abd el-Kader, the man who challenged the French armies from 1832 to 1847 before creating the bases of a real Algerian state, is today considered by independent Algeria as one of the most outstanding figures. of its history. The nobility of his attitude after his capture and the very effective protection he brought to the Christians of Damascus at the end of his life also earned him great prestige among his former adversaries. A documentary told in dialectal Arabic by the voice of Amazigh Kateb.

CHoosing at Twenty(fr)

Between 1954-1962, one hundred to three hundred young French people refused to participate in the Algerian war. These rebels, soldiers or conscripts were non-violent or anti-colonialists. Some took refuge in Switzerland where Swiss citizens came to their aid, while in France they were condemned as traitors to the country. In 1962, a few months after Independence, Villi Hermann went to a region devastated by war near the Algerian-Moroccan border, to help rebuild a school. In 2016 he returned to Algeria and reunited with his former students. He also met French refractories, now living in France or Switzerland.

Dawn of the Damned(fr)

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Iceland: The Quest for Origins(fr)

The fascinating landscape formations of Iceland in the North Atlantic bear witness to the beauty and primal power of nature. They were created through the interaction of powerful volcanic, geological and biological processes that have been changing the face of the earth for billions of years. This is what the Earth might have looked like four billion years ago. Iceland is the realm of ice and fire. Nowhere else is there such a high density of volcanoes. The landscapes, which are continually reshaped by eruptions, make the island a natural laboratory full of clues about the formation and development of the earth. The documentary follows a group of scientists through the most active areas of Iceland, along a mountain range that has emerged from the ocean. On the slopes of the volcanoes, in the fog of the fumaroles and on streams and rivers, the three researchers explore how the first forms of life populated the earth's surface and in what evolutionary steps they took over the earth.

The Panafrican Festival in Algiers(ar)

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.

Blood Road(en)

Blood Road follows the journey of ultra-endurance mountain bike athlete Rebecca Rusch and her Vietnamese riding partner, Huyen Nguyen, as they pedal 1,200 miles along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail through the dense jungles of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Their goal: to reach the site where Rebecca’s father, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was shot down in Laos more than 40 years earlier.

A Female Cabby in Sidi Bel-Abbès(ar)

When her husband died Soumicha, mother of three, had to earn a living. She became the only woman taxi driver in Sidi Bel-Abbès, Algeria. This film accompanies Soumicha around a city where religious and political violence rages, and records her experiences in a job normally reserved for men.

Recuerdos de Extremadura(es)

Recuerdos de Extremadura is a film essay about memory and the act of filming, where reality and fiction mingle in a sea of memories. In 2018, the director attempted to shoot his first film, The Third Woman, in Cáceres, with his friend Amanda Toro as the main character. However, the project remained unfinished. Years later, this experimental medium-length film returns to those images, confronting the filmed material with the distance of the present. What emerges is a reflection on cinema and memories, on cinema as trace and absence.

Mariner of the Mountains(fr)

Filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat, cross the Mediterranean, and embark on his first journey to Algeria. Accompanied by the memory of his mother, Iracema, and his camera, Aïnouz gives a detailed account of the journey to his father’s homeland, interweaving present, past, and future.

Five Directors On The Battle of Algiers(en)

This 17-minute documentary is featured on the 3-Disc Criterion Collection DVD of The Battle of Algiers (1966), released in 2004. An in-depth look at the Battle of Algiers through the eyes of five established and accomplished filmmakers; Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, Julian Schnabel and Mira Nair. They discuss how the shots, cinematography, set design, sound and editing directly influenced their own work and how the film's sequences look incredibly realistic, despite the claim that everything in the film was staged .

A People on the March(fr)

In 1962, René Vautier, together with some Algerian friends, organised the audio-visual formation centre Ben Aknoun to encourage a "dialogue in images" between the two factions. Together with his students he made a film that shows the history of the Algerian War and of the ALN (National Liberation Army), and life during the reconstruction.

À Propos De... L'autre Détail(fr)

Documentary edited from testimonies on the torture of people who experienced the war. Some witnesses were tortured by Jean-Marie Le Pen. These testimonies will help defend the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné in court against Jean-Marie Le Pen for defamation. The film was shown in 1985 during the trial and some witnesses also came to support the newspaper. But the 1963 amnesty law protects the politician, prohibiting the use of images that could harm people who served during the Algerian war.