Elles
In the aftermath of independence, Algerian high school girls talk about their lives and comment on how they envisage the future, democracy, their place in society. "We talk a lot with my students about the status of women in Algeria and their dreams. They had written many powerful texts on these themes. A film club manager passed them on to Ahmed Lallem, whom I then met. The director of the school authorized her to conduct about forty preparatory interviews with tape recorders with high school girls, then to film with her team a debate in class where the teenagers spoke about their lives and their aspirations. He also filmed Arabic lessons given by Egyptian teachers from a very traditionalist religious point of view. Many distributed students from Kabylia spoke little Arabic and rejected the content of this teaching. (Monique Martineau, cooperating teacher in Algeria in 1966, present on the set) Born in 1940 in Sétif in Algeria, Ahmed Lallem is a member of the FLN and is part of the Lakhdar Hamina group in Tunis. He also works as a war reporter in the border area. After a period on Yugoslav television in Belgrade, he studied cinema for eight months at IDHEC in Paris, then took courses at the National School of Cinema, Theater and Television in Lodz, Poland. He made his debut as a director in 1963 and, in almost thirty years, shot two feature films and a dozen documentaries and reports. Her main subjects are the Algerian political awakening (Forbidden Zone, presented at the Directors' Fortnight in 1975), historical symbolism and cultural realities, but also taboos (the emancipation of women, the question of AIDS in Algeria). Since the mid-1990s, the director had been in exile in France. He died in Tours in 2009. In 1966, Ahmed Lallem directed Elles, an astonishing documentary in which, four years after the independence of Algeria, he gives a voice to high school girls in first and final year. A pretext to question the society in which he lives, and let young women evoke a daily life, frustrations that could perhaps change... The word "revolution" is not so far away, after all. The film will never be shown publicly in Algeria. Thirty years after Elles, Ahmed Lallem finds some of the high school girls and turns Algerian, 30 years later (1995): Souad, Farida, Hassina or Badra we talk and take stock, at the time of the "dark decade", on the rules of society, exile, lost illusions.
- Runtime
- 22m
- Released
- 1966
Details
Release year: 1966
Storyline
In the aftermath of independence, Algerian high school girls talk about their lives and comment on how they envisage the future, democracy, their place in society. "We talk a lot with my students about the status of women in Algeria and their dreams. They had written many powerful texts on these themes. A film club manager passed them on to Ahmed Lallem, whom I then met. The director of the school authorized her to conduct about forty preparatory interviews with tape recorders with high school girls, then to film with her team a debate in class where the teenagers spoke about their lives and their aspirations. He also filmed Arabic lessons given by Egyptian teachers from a very traditionalist religious point of view. Many distributed students from Kabylia spoke little Arabic and rejected the content of this teaching. (Monique Martineau, cooperating teacher in Algeria in 1966, present on the set) Born in 1940 in Sétif in Algeria, Ahmed Lallem is a member of the FLN and is part of the Lakhdar Hamina group in Tunis. He also works as a war reporter in the border area. After a period on Yugoslav television in Belgrade, he studied cinema for eight months at IDHEC in Paris, then took courses at the National School of Cinema, Theater and Television in Lodz, Poland. He made his debut as a director in 1963 and, in almost thirty years, shot two feature films and a dozen documentaries and reports. Her main subjects are the Algerian political awakening (Forbidden Zone, presented at the Directors' Fortnight in 1975), historical symbolism and cultural realities, but also taboos (the emancipation of women, the question of AIDS in Algeria). Since the mid-1990s, the director had been in exile in France. He died in Tours in 2009. In 1966, Ahmed Lallem directed Elles, an astonishing documentary in which, four years after the independence of Algeria, he gives a voice to high school girls in first and final year. A pretext to question the society in which he lives, and let young women evoke a daily life, frustrations that could perhaps change... The word "revolution" is not so far away, after all. The film will never be shown publicly in Algeria. Thirty years after Elles, Ahmed Lallem finds some of the high school girls and turns Algerian, 30 years later (1995): Souad, Farida, Hassina or Badra we talk and take stock, at the time of the "dark decade", on the rules of society, exile, lost illusions.