8 Memory and identity
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Guy Austin
Abstract
A loss of identity and a sense of dispossession are two related and painful threads that run through modern Algerian history. Dispossessed in a variety of ways, predominantly uprooted from rural communities in the massive urbanisation that followed independence, Algerian audiences are offered a return to the land, to memory and history by the cinema of Hakkar and Mokneche. Viva Laldjérie presents the struggle of both Papicha and Goucem to reach a form of individuation that acknowledges but moves on from the past. In a culture that Stora has associated with silence and secrecy, where the mass deaths of the civil war are represented by a single photograph, and the mass deaths of the liberation struggle remain uncounted and consigned to the 'garbage bin of national history', the role of cinema as a listening and a seeing that re-presents the bodies of Algeria's subaltern masses is therefore an urgent one.
Abstract
A loss of identity and a sense of dispossession are two related and painful threads that run through modern Algerian history. Dispossessed in a variety of ways, predominantly uprooted from rural communities in the massive urbanisation that followed independence, Algerian audiences are offered a return to the land, to memory and history by the cinema of Hakkar and Mokneche. Viva Laldjérie presents the struggle of both Papicha and Goucem to reach a form of individuation that acknowledges but moves on from the past. In a culture that Stora has associated with silence and secrecy, where the mass deaths of the civil war are represented by a single photograph, and the mass deaths of the liberation struggle remain uncounted and consigned to the 'garbage bin of national history', the role of cinema as a listening and a seeing that re-presents the bodies of Algeria's subaltern masses is therefore an urgent one.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vi
- Preface vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- 1 An introduction to modern Algerian history and politics 1
- 2 A brief history of Algerian cinema 20
- 3 The war of liberation on screen 33
- 4 Representing gender 61
- 5 Berber cinema, historical and ahistorical 100
- 6 After ‘Black October’ 121
- 7 Screening the ‘invisible war’ 141
- 8 Memory and identity 158
- 9 Conclusion 173
- Filmography 192
- Index 195
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vi
- Preface vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- 1 An introduction to modern Algerian history and politics 1
- 2 A brief history of Algerian cinema 20
- 3 The war of liberation on screen 33
- 4 Representing gender 61
- 5 Berber cinema, historical and ahistorical 100
- 6 After ‘Black October’ 121
- 7 Screening the ‘invisible war’ 141
- 8 Memory and identity 158
- 9 Conclusion 173
- Filmography 192
- Index 195
