Al-Aljazair: Algerian cinema is looking for a revival decades after the boom of the 1970s and a severe decline, with the authorities experiencing hot and cold patronage.
Today, the country counts only a dozen cinemas amid legal, bureaucratic, and financial constraints.
“Algerian cinema is rich in talent and poor in resources,” says producer and film critic Ahmed Bedjaoui. “You have to give the filmmakers some freedom.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, the North African country had more than 450 cinemas and film libraries.
His production later produced cinematic masterpieces such as Inspector Tahar’s Vacation (1973), Omar Gatlato (1976) and the Palme d’Or winner Chronicle of the Fire Years (1975).
However, in the 1980s, the industry fell into a slump.
“Industry and talent are slowly disappearing,” said Bedjaoui, known as Al-Alger’s “Mister Cinema”.
The beginning of the economic and political crisis will plunge the hydrocarbon-rich country into a protracted civil war between the government and Islamist rebel groups.
During the 1992-2002 conflict, known as the “Black Decade”, many artists and film professionals left the country.
Cinemas and other places of entertainment, considered impure by Islamists, were closed one by one.
Only in the diaspora, “Filmmakers like Nadir Mohneche or Rachid Boucherib fill the void by making works about Algeria,” says Bedjaoui.
At a cabinet meeting in December last year, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced the creation of a body to monitor cinematographic production due to “the emergence of young talent in acting and directing”.
Bedjaoui said the news was related to “the political will and determination of the president to support cinema”.
But the prospects for the industry’s recovery soon faltered.
Earlier this month, the Algerian parliament passed a law criminalizing films that insult religion, morals or the history of the 1954-1962 war of independence against France.
Director Sofia Djama called it a “shameful law” in a Facebook post.
“The world’s press will be censored, today’s cinema, tomorrow’s literature, photography, and all creativity and expression that does not conform to them,” he said.
Several journalists and activists have been arrested in Algeria, which ranks 136th out of 180 countries and regions in Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom index.
After taking office in December 2019, President Tebboune promised to “put the film industry at the center of his program” by giving the secretary of state, filmmaker and actor Bachir Derrais.
But one year after its establishment, this secretariat was dissolved due to conflict in the Ministry of Culture.
An example of this tension, which lasted for almost six years, is the ban on Derrais’ biopic about Larbi Ben Mhidi, a prominent leader of the Algerian War of Independence who was killed by the French army in 1957.
The film was finally screened in Aliair on March 4, marking the 67th anniversary of Ben Mhidin’s murder.
Amir Bensaifi, 39, is part of a new generation of Algerian filmmakers who say they have to work hard to make their films.
Of his 2023 film, Bensaifi said, “I have no finance, he produced it himself,” adding that he worked with independent technicians who believed in the project and all the producers.
Her friend Imene Ayadi, 34, said she quit her job to get funding from France to “make a film in Arabic with technicians and actors in Algeria”.
Fouad Trifi, the director and founder of Aljazair’s first casting agency, is among those who continue to believe that Aliair is the “land of cinema”.
“There is energy, there is desire,” Trifi told AFP. “There is an audience. We saw that at the festival.”
However, the enthusiasm faced many challenges in production and distribution.
The country’s silver screen is still “restricted to previews and limited distribution,” said Derrais, whose film was shown only once in previews.
He also blamed “a huge lack of testing rooms”.
Bedjaoui said the solution could be “investing in multiplexes” and “building new cinemas.”
Last August, a four-screen, 990-square-meter multiplex cinema opened inside Garden City, the newest mall on the outskirts of Algiers.
The multiplex had a turnover of 90 million Algerian dinars (more than $660,000) in six months after opening, said its manager, Riad Ait-Aoudia.
“There were a lot of people at the launch,” team communications manager Reem Haldi told AFP.
“The first theater of this scale.” APPLICATIONS
Algerian film industry vies for revival after decades of neglect
