It is quite surprising that the film structures developed by the newly independent Algeria reflected the colonial past. This dependence vis-à-vis the foreign expertise in filmmaking is also reflected in the production of first feature films Algerian fiction. The completion of the first feature film Algerian was led by a foreigner so young A peace was in fact directed by Jacques Charby.
It is generally regarded as the cinema has its roots in the liberation struggle, however, this film reveals a surprising continuity. The structure given to the film industry after independence resumed exactly divisions and concerns of colonial structures. As pointed out in his study Maherzi Lotfi, the "drive-bus', grid rural revolutionary who wanted (CDC), accurately reflects the network of colonial propaganda (DSC) and the new structure established for the production of feature films (CNCA) is inspired by the French National Centre for Cinematography (CNC).
The state plays a decisive role in framing the Algerian film. His organization controls the import, distribution and presentation of films as well as production. They were the bodies of censorship, controlled access to the profession, and when state funding was available for production, they were responsible for its allocation. Limitations blatant these responsibilities appear multiple clearly expensive in European co-productions that they have incurred in the 1970s and beyond. All these efforts were of financial disaster with the exception of three landmark films of Youssef Chahine financed by ONCIC.
The Algerian government believes in total submission to the culture to politics. The ONCIC therefore controlled all aspects of cinema, and although the filmmakers have a certain freedom of tone - as evidenced by the experience Merzak Allouache when performing Omar Gatlato (1976) - the government imposed on its national cinema themes to treated. Algerian cinema was so limited and uncritical, taking on all aspects of a national cinema (ist) stressing the ideas of coherence and unity, and manufacturer of both the national myth and the ideological production.
Considering the Algerian crisis, the historian Benjamin Stora has said it is "partly feeds myths forged in the war for Independence ": " The overflow of a falsified memory appears as an obstacle a real reappropriation of the past, building a spirit of nationalism based Republican and tolerant Islam " [1] . In this sense, the film can be seen as complicit in the falsification of the Algerian struggle by the FLN, which eventually caused the tragic collapse of democratic structures in 1992.
Since the early 90s the number of cinema has continued to decline, the situation in Algeria is catastrophic, we went from 300 rooms at the time of independence only a fortnight today. This decrease in cinemas has been accompanied by extensive development of alternative distribution structures, with video, communications satellites and the European Internet. The market is flooded with pirated DVDs and VHS.
In this context, local film production is inevitably threatened. The dissolution of the production structures of the state and support systems have forced the filmmakers to turn to foreign funding.
Films with such blended funding can only reflect the priorities (perhaps unspoken) of the two ways in which an Algerian film can develop a reputation before leaving local: The international film festivals and art cinemas and testing French. But these requirements are contradictory: on the one hand, a requirement of "exotic" is confined to a territory both geographically and ideologically and also a requirement of reality: the document Algeria through its current problems, generally reduced to those of urban areas and in relation to women. In this contest it is difficult to speak of Algerian cinema as if it were a single definition.
For filmmakers from Algeria, the main source of foreign financing is France, where their chances are increased thanks to the French state policy. Analyzing what he calls "cinematographic deterritorialization" 1, Raphael Millet draws our attention to the role of the French government (especially between 1984 and 1996), which supports film production in all areas where it has interests or influence (sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Vietnam etc..). Thanks mainly to the Ministry of Cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the South Fund (managed by the CNC), FASILD, the agency of the Francophonie, but also through support of legislation increasing the number of productions (agreements formal agreements with nearly 40 countries, and giving an automatic right to receive aid) and order of July 6, 1992 for film production in developing countries [2] . These structures are based on specific criteria determining the style of movies. The South Fund which Algerian filmmakers have access, said he works must be "a strong cultural identity ", created by filmmakers living in the country concerned and in no case did the shooting may have place in France or Europe [3] .
Nationality films
From the 1970s until today, we witness the permanent coming and going between Algeria and France filmmakers. Since the late 1990s, the film is virtually nonexistent in Algeria, most directors and technicians have been forced into exile. The lull that plagued the country since 2001, however, allowed a certain number of directors to return. In the meantime, most focused on the themes of the immigrant community with such Merzak Allouache Hi Cousin! and Mohamed Zemmouri with 100% Arabica and Beur White Red . Others in the image of Mohamed Rachid Belhadj have continued to move away from questions Maghreb. His feature film Mirka , made in 1999, is an international co-production touring the Balkans with French producers, Italian and English, a cinematography Italian stars of French and English. The fact that it is presented as a film "Algerian" the Carthage Film Festival in 2000, has surprised many critics. More recently it Indigenous Bouchareb which caused a scandal by representing Algeria in the Oscars 2007. These controversies underlying the contrast between the way the film contributes to the construction of national identity on the one hand and the insistence of the critics on the other hand cultural purity. When it comes to movies, issues of national identity are regularly raised. But in a globalized world, international co-productions that he is of national identities?
It is increasingly difficult to assign a national identity defined in Arab and African films. Take the example of Mohamed Sudani, was born in Algeria in 1949, but is of Malian origin. Since his studies at IDHEC he lived and worked in Switzerland. His film Waalo Fendo (1997), is a Swiss co-production which takes place in the community of illegal Senegalese immigrants in Milan since Sudani returned to Algeria to film a documentary without images War (2000 ).
The short film is not left short films Algerian apparently having been made over the past five years are the result of European productions. These films were shot in Algeria and for the most part their filmmakers were trained in European film schools, and currently live in Europe.
This "hybrid" culture is very legible in the work of filmmakers Algerian feature films from immigrant belonging to the second generation, commonly called the "Beurs". The first films of these directors, Mehdi Charef, Bouchareb, Abdelkrim Bahloul, reflecting the lives and concerns of immigrant communities in which they grew up. The
joined in the early 90s, a dozen new filmmakers. Algeria The time is now inaccessible from these new director a kind of fantasy. Traid Karim, for his film The truth tellers (2000) chose to shoot in Portugal scenes of his film supposed to take place in Algiers. The Harem of Madame Osmane (2000) Nadir Moknèche was filmed in Morocco. Benjamin Stora in its study of Algeria in the 90s sees a film structured around the absence. All this appears in a film whose action unfolds in 1993 in a building in Algiers inhabited by women but in fact everything is merely the absence " the absence of men gone to war in the fields Petroleum or France, the absence of Algeria real lack of ideological commitment, lack of blood and cure re " [4] . Nadir Moknèche since turned to two movies in Algiers Viva Aldjérie (2004) and Paloma Delight (2007). Most filmmakers
immigrants or an immigrant felt the need to address other subjects taking their distance from the soil of origin. Bouchareb for example, has made films about children mestiza ( Dust of Life) and on the tensions between Senegalese immigrants and Afro-American New York (Little Senegal ). But as for Bouchareb Mehdi Charef who at one time also abandoned the description of the source community, there is a homecoming: the latter produced a film about his childhood in Algeria called Cartouches Gauloises in 2007, Rachid Bouchareb after Indigenous preparing a film about the massacre of May 8, 1945 in Sétif.
policy stimulus from the Department of Algerian culture, associated with a return to relative calm on the security front a new impetus to these "exiles" a creative return.
The Algerian filmmaker in exile or those of immigrant origin have become integrated with ease into the structures of commercial cinema, where the French international coproduction and participatory institutions are common. The French government's interest against the "cultural exception" for filmmakers and production have provided Francophone filmmakers from Algeria a land welcoming. For most
shot entirely in French and some just released movies born from these EU policies rarely meet a public success in Algeria (mostly of these films were screened last decade previewed in Algiers but knew not of cinema ... The networks piracy is responsible for bridging this gap).
this state of aesthetics, are in addition to ideological reasons cited reasons underlying structural and inherent in the policy or insufficiently coherent-in cinema and culture. The reality of this field is that of a traditional practice. Without industrial structures, without stable funding, without film school, this sector has attracted marginal nor the enthusiasm of intellectuals, nor the various professional vocations (writers, assistants, set designers, costume designers, etc..) which are necessary.
In Algeria, we must admit that the attempt to establish as a cinema system "and pledged dealienating" which was different from the "ideological artifice of film classics" failed to propose new forms, new aesthetic, and n has done that reducing the scope of intervention of the films by reducing them to the particulars of speech illustrated.
is from this point of view, a film that has consistently seen the initiatives of its promoters confined to the more mundane crafts. On the one hand, a very low-production never exceeded ten feature films per year for cinema, in its better years, on the other hand, random production of more and more adventurous about the implementation of projects. This is said not to justify the feeling of dissatisfaction that we leave these films, and evacuate the moral responsibility and artistic creators, but to understand the global climate in which projects cheminent until a number of them track the day.
The other crucial problem for Algerian cinema is that of transmission namely, training in all sectors, directed to the projectionist. More than 40 years after independence, no training structure has been implemented since the dissolution of the INC became legendary ...
[1] Benjamin Stora, History of Algeria since independence, Paris: Edition La Découverte, 1994: p.102-103
[2] Raphael Millet ( in) dependence of films from the South & / vs France, Theorem 5, Paris1998
[3] Fund website South http://www.ambafrance-cr.org/article.php3?id_article=472
[4] Benjamin Stora, The Invisible War: Algeria 90s, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2001 ,: p.91
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