This November is the 16th Documentary Film Month – an annual event organised by the French Ministry of Culture and the Institut français for showing documentary films in cultural, social and educational venues in France and 39 countries across the world. The CMCA, in partnership with Marseille’s Alcazar Library, has organized free screenings of two documentaries:
– Maryse GARGOUR’s “La terre parle arabe”, on Friday, November 6th at 5.00pm at the Gyptis Cinema (136, rue Loubon, 13003 Marseille). This documentary won the Mediterranean Memory Award, the ENTV Broadcasting Award and an ASBU Special Mention at the 13th PriMed in 2008.
By the end of the 19th century Zionism, a minority political movement, was an international reality. Elaborated according to its leaders’ theories, it gave form to the desire to create a Jewish state somewhere in the world, particularly in Palestine. But at that time, and for centuries beforehand, “the land speaks Arabic” – Palestine was inhabited by Palestinian Arabs.
So how could Zionist leaders reconcile their political dream with the reality of late nineteenth century Palestine? Their solution was formed well before the 1917 Balfour Declaration: the Zionist leaders planned, organized and implemented the transfer of the Arab population from Palestinian, their land. Every means was used, most particularly strength and brutality …
Maryse GARGOUR was born in Jaffa. She graduated from the French Press Institute and studied for her PhD in Information Sciences at the University of Paris II (Panthéon). She was a journalist and producer at the Beirut bureau of French radio and television, worked for UNESCO’s International Film and Television Council in Paris, and was also a freelance journalist for foreign television channels in Paris. She has made two documentaries: “Une Palestinienne face à la Palestine” and “Le Pays de Blanche” and written and produced “Jaffa la Mienne” and “Loin de Falastin”.
– Sonia KICHAH’s “Les oubliés de Cassis” (The Forgotten People of Cassis), on Saturday, November 7th at 3:00pm in the conference room of the Alcazar Library, followed by a discussion with the director. This documentary was selected in the First Film category of the 2009 PriMed.
The Fontblanche quarry, on the outskirts of Cassis, one of France’s last shanty towns. In a way a village, but with no name, no women and no children. A village, but in reality a small shameful suburb of a small town too rich and too precious to admit its presence. The documentary is about the men, all originally from Tunisia, who live in this 30 year old slum made of planks, tarpaulins and debris, which is going to be destroyed, forcing its now elderly inhabitants to start again somewhere else: a second uprooting.
In 1998 Sonia KICHAH obtained a degree in film at the Sorbonne. She worked as an assistant director on several films before making her first short film, “Feu vert”, in 2002. In 2005 she made her first documentary, “Identités voilées” and in 2008 her second, “Les oubliés de Cassis”.
Click here to view the full programme of Documentary Film Month.
