Ever since David Lean came here to shoot parts of Lawrence of Arabia, the Moroccan desert of Ouarzazate has formed the backdrop to countless Hollywood blockbusters, including The Mummy and Gladiator. Major productions like these often need masses of extras—and the local people are all too willing...
Thami works as an extra in foreign films shot in a small village near Ouarzazate. He became a friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini, who shot in 1966 his movie Oedipus Rex in Morocco. Forty years later, an Italian crew comes to Ouarzazate to shoot a film. Thami thinks his friend Pasolini is back in town...
Known as the “years of lead,” the 1970s in Morocco were marked by severe police crackdowns on dissent, with arbitrary arrests and detention and torture in secret prisons. To survive, a number of activists lived clandestinely. Essafi uses archival footage to tell the story of Aziz, a 23-year-old...
The female Moroccan musicians known as sheikhates sing about the realities of life – about the land, nature, wars, mountains, crises and, of course, they sing about love.
Ali Essafi visited Bouanani three years before the latter’s death. The filmmaker, poet and novelist who also made drawings was leading a reclusive life in a remote village with his wife Naïma and many cats, living in the midst of huge piles of books and manuscripts.
An amazing journey back in time to Morocco in the seventies, through a colorful collage of jazz music, posters and magazine covers, archive footage and cartoons; from the perspective of the artists, many of whom ended up in jail or disappeared without a trace under the tyranny of King Hassan II.
La Septième Porte is the title of a 300-page film-history work dedicated to Moroccan cinema between 1907 and 1986. It was written by Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011) by hand over many years, but never published. Ali Essafi visited Bouanani three years before his death. Film excerpts, interviews and...
