Thakirah Arba'at 'Ashar

Mémoire 14

Forum 2017

After the establishment of a national television broadcast channel in the 1970s, the Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM) shifted its production mandate to generate content for it. The same decade also marked the beginning of political repression, strong policing of artistic expression and intolerance of dissent. Bouanani and R’chich were filmmakers working at the CCM who were regarded as subversive provocateurs and rarely allowed to direct films. Crafted exclusively from film archives, Thakirah Arba’at 'Ashar (1971) was Bouanani’s first feature, but the censors forced him to cut it down from 2 hours and 18 minutes to 24 minutes. Abdelmajid R’chich’s Al-Boraq (1973) is a short fiction about a man who fights against the seizure of his land by powerful developers. And lastly, Bouanani’s Al-Manabe’ al-Arba'a (1977), a very low-budget fantastical adaption of a poetic fable, features his wife Naïma Saoudi, who also worked as an art director and set designer. It is his only film in colour, which convinced him that his vocation was to work in black and white.

by Ahmed Bouanani 1971 French 24’ Black/White

Crew

Director	Ahmed Bouanani
Editing	Ahmed Bouanani

Produced by

Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM)

Additional information

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Ahmed Bouanani

Born in 1938 in Casablanca, Morocco. He studied Film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris. In addition to directing his own films, Bouanani also worked as an editor and screenwriter for other Moroccan directors. He was also a writer and published several volumes of poetry. Ahmed Bouanani died in 2011 in Demnate, Morocco.

Filmography (selection)

1966 Tarfaya Aw Masseerat Sha'er / Tarfaya ou La marche d’un poète; 20 min. 1968 Sitta wa Thaniat 'Ashar / Six et douze; 18 min. 1971 Thakirah Arba'at 'Ashar / Mémoire 14; 24 min. 1977 Al-Manabe' al-Arba'a / Les quatre sources; 35 min. 1980 Al-Sarab / Le Mirage (The Mirage); 100 min. 1981 Carte de visite; 30 min. 1982 Casablanca, bilan et perspectives; 50 min. · Sidi Kacem ou le rameau d’Olivier; 11 min. 1984 L’Enfant, la torture et l’ordinateur; 15 min. · Complexe sportif Mohammed V de Casablanca; 22 min. 1991 Raconte-moi Meknès; 16 min.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2017