journalistic investigation among the peasant women at the end of the film. The film ends with a film that begins. Assia Djebar is now convinced that after this first film, which is also the first feature-length film by a female filmmaker from the Maghreb, she will make more. What kind of films? She believes that documentaries are the future for Third World cinema. In Algeria, for example, cinema arrives in a cultural no-man’s-land. Therefore, it cannot represent this synthesis of all the arts it represents in other countries. The constant transition from creative documentary to fiction, the refusal to choose a position in relation to other forms of cinema — which is not a refusal of universal film culture, but an awareness of national cultural reality — and the concern not to abandon literature [2]: all this allows us to claim that Assia Djebar will contribute considerably to the ongoing broader debate on cinema in the Third World. Other women, alongside her, are casting a new light on their own society, transforming it through their gaze. A meeting of female filmmakers to be held in Algiers in the next six months will open a dialogue between those who, after being silent and watched for so long, are now speaking, watching and creating.
14
Originally published as ‘Une femme, un film, un autre regard’ in Demain l’Afrique (September 1977). Translated by Sis Matthé
[1] La soif [The Mischief] (1957), Les impatients (1958), Les enfants du nouveau monde [Children of the New World] (1962), Les alouettes naïves (1967) (published by Julliard and 10/18, Paris). [2] She’s preparing a new book that is to be published next winter, Femme arable, a story about the experience of filming. (Editor’s note: this book was never published, but parts of Femme arable eventually made their way into Vaste est la prison [So Vast the Prison] (1995)).
Assia Djebar