Edited by Svend Erik Larsen, Steen Bille Jørgensen and Margaret R. Higonnet
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIII] 2022
► pp. 289–305
Assia Djebar’s films represent the complex cultural memory of the Maghreb region in opposition to the official historical narrative promoted by a post-colonial authoritarian regime. Inspired by traditional Maghrebi musical genres, in La Nouba des femmes du Mont-Chenoua (1977) and La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli (1982) Djebar uses mixed techniques of assemblage, collage and citation. These films are all about the reconstruction of memory – mainly the oral traditions transmitted by women – and seek to recover the repressed collective past of the colonial and postcolonial periods. Situating the aesthetics of Djebar’s films within the modern political and cultural context of Algeria, as well as the broader Maghrebi context, this case study asks such questions as: How can cinema translate the complexity of oral memory? And how can it contribute to a representation of the past that wants to decolonize the nationalized history of the Maghreb? Through a close analysis of the two films, this essay shows how Djebar’s cinematic project suggests answers to those questions by constructing a new historical realism that provides an entry point to the experience of a silenced past.