Special Event
in conjunction with the Arab Film Festival
A Muslim
Childhood
(El Ayel/La Gosse de Tanger)
dir. Moumen Smihi (Morocco,
2006)
With and
Introduction and Q and A with the director.
October 23,
4pm at the Media Theater (M-110)
University
of California, Santa Cruz.
This event
is free, and open to the public.
Moumen Smihi’s career
as a director spans more than thirty years, making him one of the most
eminent figures in Moroccan cinema. In A Muslim Childhood,
Smihi creates a sumptuous mise-en-scene of Tangiers in the 1950s, where
a young boy, Larbi, tries to find his place in the collision of cultures
and influences he experiences around him. Under the sway of his strict
Muslim father, modern mother, and French high school, the solitary and
timid Larbi finds escape from his personal traumas in the International
Zone of Tangiers, where cinema and decadence beckon and offer him another
kind of world. Smihi’s film is saturated throughout with a color
palette of Mediterranean blue that helps the film achieve the mixture
of Proustian nostalgia and Dickensian fictional style that Smihi consciously
sought. In an arresting and contemplative style, in which voiceover
often accompanies shots resembling tableaux vivants, Smihi attempts
to recreate the singularity of a time, place, and cultural identity
for his viewer. In so doing, this stunning film, part fiction and part
autobiography, declares its love for cinema while at the same time rendering
for its viewers the rich cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity
of life in 1950s Morocco.
We are pleased to present
this film and Moumen Smihi's visit in conjunction with the 11th Annual
Arab Film Festival, running October
17-28 in Berkeley, San Francisco, and San Jose and Oct 31-Nov 4 in Los
Angeles. Please see their website for
more details about the festival.
Directions
to the the UCSC campus
Map
of the Media Center and environs.
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