Before The Dying Of The Light is an experimental scrapbook of a film that, to an extent, makes up for what it lacks in context by its immersive evocation of an era. The jumping off point for Ali Essafi's documentary is a 1974 Moroccan film, About Some Meaningless Events, directed by Mostafa Derkaoui. It played only once before being censored - although it has recently been restored - and here Derkaoui offers a consideration of how it came to be made, in voice-over.
He recalls his youth as something of a firebrand, leaving his family - an event recounted with a deep feeling of sorrow and regret here - in pursuit of what he imagined to be the greater political good, part of a clandestine movement that fought the oppression of King Hassan II. Derkaoui outlines the way that his hopes came up against the hard reality of the loneliness and.
He recalls his youth as something of a firebrand, leaving his family - an event recounted with a deep feeling of sorrow and regret here - in pursuit of what he imagined to be the greater political good, part of a clandestine movement that fought the oppression of King Hassan II. Derkaoui outlines the way that his hopes came up against the hard reality of the loneliness and.
- 4/8/2021
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Having rolled out its inaugural edition in the wake of 9/11, Doc Fortnight will now be celebrating its 20th anniversary virtually (from March 18-April 5), the result of another world-upending tragedy. And yet the full-steam-ahead spirit of MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media remains. The 2021 lineup, both eclectic and ambitious, spotlights 18 features and four shorts – another 10 films screen in the “Non/Fiction 20 Years of Doc Fortnight” sidebar – alongside a revival of Moroccan director Mostafa Derkaoui’s banned/lost/found doc-fiction from […]
The post What to Stream at Doc Fortnight 2021 (The 20th Anniversary Edition) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post What to Stream at Doc Fortnight 2021 (The 20th Anniversary Edition) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 3/19/2021
- by Lauren Wissot
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Having rolled out its inaugural edition in the wake of 9/11, Doc Fortnight will now be celebrating its 20th anniversary virtually (from March 18-April 5), the result of another world-upending tragedy. And yet the full-steam-ahead spirit of MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media remains. The 2021 lineup, both eclectic and ambitious, spotlights 18 features and four shorts – another 10 films screen in the “Non/Fiction 20 Years of Doc Fortnight” sidebar – alongside a revival of Moroccan director Mostafa Derkaoui’s banned/lost/found doc-fiction from […]
The post What to Stream at Doc Fortnight 2021 (The 20th Anniversary Edition) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post What to Stream at Doc Fortnight 2021 (The 20th Anniversary Edition) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 3/19/2021
- by Lauren Wissot
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Fresh off Sundance and a series of compelling interviews about how she chronicled the Covid-19 outbreak in China and its rampage across the the U.S., Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath will have its New York premiere as the opening film in the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight 2021.
The twenty-year old fest will be virtual, running from March 18 to April 5, with 18 documentary features, short films and special projects. Two films are world premieres and several are North American premieres, including the closing selection, Julien Faraut’s Les sorcières de l’Orient (Oriental Witches), the account of a historic Japanese women’s volleyball team and its meteoric ascent to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
The lineup includes Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers’ Inside the Brick Wall; Mohamed Soueid’s The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer; Rosine Mbakam’s Delphine’s Prayers; Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire; Ali Essafi’s...
The twenty-year old fest will be virtual, running from March 18 to April 5, with 18 documentary features, short films and special projects. Two films are world premieres and several are North American premieres, including the closing selection, Julien Faraut’s Les sorcières de l’Orient (Oriental Witches), the account of a historic Japanese women’s volleyball team and its meteoric ascent to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
The lineup includes Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers’ Inside the Brick Wall; Mohamed Soueid’s The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer; Rosine Mbakam’s Delphine’s Prayers; Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire; Ali Essafi’s...
- 2/22/2021
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Mostafa Derkaoui's About Some Meaningless Events (1974) is exclusively showing starting January 20, 2021 in the Rediscovered series."Everything which the Arab reality offers that is generous, open and creative is crushed by regimes whose only anxiety is to perpetuate their own power and self-serving interest. And what is often worse is to see that the West remains insensitive to the daily tragedy while at the same time accommodating, not to say supporting, the ruling classes who strangle the free will and aspirations of their people."—Abdellatif LaâbShot between January and April 1974, Mostafa Derkaoui’s De quelques évènements sans signification (About Some Meaningless Events) was never actually shown in Morocco, exception being made for a few clandestine occasions over the years, including a “midnight screening” at the Khourigba Film Festival in 1977. The film was immediately banned by the authorities who deemed it “inopportune” for Moroccan audiences.
- 1/19/2021
- MUBI
In this intriguing film, banned in the 70s, Mostafa Derkaoui grapples with the purpose of cinema on the streets of Casablanca
Here is an intriguing, bewildering fragment of what might be called underground new-wave cinema from Moroccan director Mostafa Derkaoui: a docu-fiction shown once in Paris in 1975, but then immediately banned by the Moroccan government after which it disappeared from view, resurfacing in 2016 when a negative was found in the archives of Filmoteca De Catalunya in Barcelona.
Derkaoui and a group of other young film-makers are shown hanging out in Casablanca, in a bar and on the streets and at the port, interviewing people about what they think cinema should be doing. Long scenes in bars spool past, apparently semi-improvised, in which the film-makers and their interviewees get very drunk, among lots of other drunk people who are always on the verge of an argument or a fist fight They...
Here is an intriguing, bewildering fragment of what might be called underground new-wave cinema from Moroccan director Mostafa Derkaoui: a docu-fiction shown once in Paris in 1975, but then immediately banned by the Moroccan government after which it disappeared from view, resurfacing in 2016 when a negative was found in the archives of Filmoteca De Catalunya in Barcelona.
Derkaoui and a group of other young film-makers are shown hanging out in Casablanca, in a bar and on the streets and at the port, interviewing people about what they think cinema should be doing. Long scenes in bars spool past, apparently semi-improvised, in which the film-makers and their interviewees get very drunk, among lots of other drunk people who are always on the verge of an argument or a fist fight They...
- 1/18/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
With six films from Morocco in this year’s program, documentary festival IDFA put a spotlight on the North African country’s documentary film scene and its artists. For those wanting an introduction to the cinematic history of Morocco, an excellent place to start is “Before the Dying of the Light,” the latest film from cinema historian Ali Essafi, which receives its international premiere in Amsterdam this week.
Using archive footage, jazz music, graphic novels and paraphernalia from the 1970s, “Before the Dying of the Light” tells the story of the birth of the Moroccan film industry and the battles that indigenous filmmakers fought against censorship. The light died under the repressive leadership of King Hassan II, who turned against artists such as director Mostafa Derkaoui, who made the independent film “About Some Meaningless Events” (1974), and actress Leila Shenna, who played a femme fatale in the 1979 Bond film “Moonraker” before...
Using archive footage, jazz music, graphic novels and paraphernalia from the 1970s, “Before the Dying of the Light” tells the story of the birth of the Moroccan film industry and the battles that indigenous filmmakers fought against censorship. The light died under the repressive leadership of King Hassan II, who turned against artists such as director Mostafa Derkaoui, who made the independent film “About Some Meaningless Events” (1974), and actress Leila Shenna, who played a femme fatale in the 1979 Bond film “Moonraker” before...
- 11/27/2020
- by Kaleem Aftab
- Variety Film + TV
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