Marrakesh- Film critic Mustafa Al-Taleb feels pleasure when he watches a documentary that combines artistic brilliance with intellectual and cultural depth in its treatment of Moroccan historical memory, which constitutes the identity of society and the source of its values and culture.
He told Al Jazeera Net that the elements of the approach, how the topic is addressed, the type of guests, the archive used, the element of suspense, and the artistic template that formulates all of this are the main reason for the success of the documentary and its capture of the eye and intelligence of the viewer.
It is highlighted that the documentary film is distinguished by the fact that the testimonies are vivid and full of natural human feelings, in addition to its intellectual and cultural depth, indicating that the cultural approach is present alongside the legal and humanitarian approach.
to caution
Whoever watched the film “White Lies” won the Palme d’Or at the International Film Festival in Marrakesh, may feel a kind of pride at the progress the documentary has made in the Moroccan cinematic scene, and the extent to which it has reached in addressing Moroccan historical memory.
The student notes that the treatment of Moroccan memory in cinema emerged strongly with the creation of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (in 2004) to compensate the victims and families of those kidnapped during the Years of Lead and the torture and lack of respect for human rights they suffered.
However, film critic Mohamed Benaziz told Al Jazeera Net, “We Moroccans look cautiously at the political camera, at documentary cinema’s treatment of this memory, and we deal with what happened with a white lie, and thus we ignore it.”
He added, “This is the starting point for director Asmaa Al-Moudair in her dealings with the events of June 1981. The matter began with caution, and as filming with the grandmother progressed, the director discovered non-white facts, and thus the film took on a cultural and political dimension that reveals the Moroccans’ dealings with their shared and unspoken past. It was born.” Positive approach to resistance to caution.
In turn, Moroccan director Ezz Al-Arab Al-Alawi, in an interview with Al Jazeera Net, stressed that exhuming Moroccan collective memory in creative documentary works is necessary and urgent, to contribute to preserving national identity and linking bridges between it and the recent and distant past.
What it is
Critics believe that the Moroccan documentary film is governed by historical memory, open to social history, political and cultural memory, and the private biographies of film personalities and creators, within which traces of a remarkable collective history are concentrated.
In this regard, academic researcher and film critic Hamid Atbato confirms – to Al Jazeera Net – that this film comes from every social group, and not from the creator’s imagined individuality alone, and thus conscious and unconscious effects are imprinted in this creativity that highlights it with features related to history and memory in its multiple meanings.
He points out that what makes the documentary refer to expressive elements related to the individual biographies of the film’s characters, and the biography of the creative self, fall within a general context, related to the biography of society, history, and the Moroccan cinematic field.
He notes that what shapes the Moroccan documentary affiliation is the remarkable openness to types of public and private wounds and losses, and to facts that are marginalized or intended to be marginalized, which he considers a form of reading and interpreting history in a way that serves Moroccan cinema and the social history associated with it.
While the importance of the documentary, according to the student film critic, lies in the fact that it addresses the mind and conscience of the viewer together, and the documentary seeks to convey the reality of the viewer while asking him several positively provocative questions that make him reconsider his view of this reality or a specific historical period or a specific national issue and push him to pay attention to it. Meaning that it raises the level of knowledge and intelligence of the viewer, as well as raising the level of his artistic taste.
impact
Documentary creativity contributes to cultural interest in Moroccan historical memory. In this regard, film critic Benaziz says that every documentary or fictional film about the past creates a cultural phenomenon, digs up linguistic, ethnic and political conflicts, melts the debate and filters the shared Moroccan memory, so the political camera can be useful, stressing that every coronation proves that the past does not It dies and needs continuous reading to understand it and purify itself from it.
Researcher Atbato explains that crowning “White Lies” or any other film of the same type, with similar work on what is related to memory, is important because it draws attention to what he worked on, and draws attention to issues, topics, and facts that were not paid attention to, and it also contributes to settling their status in consciousness. Public and private, it applies to films that dealt with burning issues, and their coronation played a role in reviving them and renewing conversation about them.
In turn, Al-Alawi notes that documentary creativity has an impact when it deals with memory according to a deep creative directorial vision that works to explore the depths of that character or search and scrutinize what is behind historical events and facts, deconstructing them and reformulating them socially, politically and economically.
He adds: This is done by hosting experts and academics specialized in history, sociology, and anthropology, who treat the historical material in a clear language that the target audience understands, and in a creative directorial style that provokes and excites the viewer, and in turn makes him raise questions during the reception process and beyond. This documentary creativity, based on historical memory, also contributes to creating an intellectual and cultural movement in Morocco that preserves and preserves the national identity, which has branching roots both historically and geographically.
horizons
Anyone who follows Moroccan documentary cinema may notice that it has accumulated – through its treatment of Moroccan historical memory – important experiences that did not begin recently, but rather with the beginning of its pioneers, as critics say.
However, according to Al-Alawi’s opinion, this approach is still limited and narrow, due to the absence of cultural cooperation between Moroccan directors, historians and academics, and the weak investment in this type of documentary cinema, because this excavation requires a long time, deep research and scrutiny of historical sources and documents, and also requires allocating an important budget. In addition to boldness, far from superficial approach.
He confirms that Moroccan cinema has not yet addressed topics whose themes depend on Moroccan figures from history, both medieval and modern, figures who have left their mark on Morocco’s history politically, militarily and socially as well, and the effects of their period are still clear and evident in what Morocco is today.
He points out that there are topics related to certain historical events, whether political, economic or social, especially those that occurred in the 20th century or the end of the 19th century, and that require boldness in presenting, digging into the recent past and shedding light on them.
On the other hand, researcher Atbato considers that all the topics that were worked on in the Moroccan documentary film are of great value, but what has been achieved does not constitute the required accumulation, because we need to create an influential qualitative accumulation that can renew our cinema, and renew the awareness that reality needs as well. .
He adds that the aspects of political memory have not yet been exhausted in the documentary film, and there is a lot that has not been worked on, and it is of great value in terms of what is historical and human and what responds to the dramatic, expressive and emotional needs in documentary cinema.
