The Madar Festivalinaugurated Wednesday, continues at Ritz cinema of Casablanca until January 17. This event looks at the challenges of migrations and travel in the central Maghreb regionincluding theAlgeriathe Tunisia and the Morocco.
Mariangela Palladinoprincipal investigator of Madar networkstressed the importance of collaboration between academic institutions and health organizations. civil society in the Maghreb and the United Kingdomparticularly in a context where cultural exchanges and artistic dynamics make it possible to go beyond the limits of traditional approaches. She emphasized the power of art to transcend political tensions and bureaucratic obstacles. For her, theart has the capacity to challenge and raise awareness, offering an alternative route to address complex topics such as migrant rights and political issues related to displacement. The festival highlights the need for a multidimensional approach to understand and address migration issues in the Maghreb, focusing on political as well as social and human dynamics.
Organized by the Maghreb Action on Displacement and Rights network (Madar)this event offers a series of activities ranging from round tables to projections de filmspassing through expositionsof the art installations and a concert of jazzthus creating a space for dialogue and reflection around the migration issue. The films offered as part of Madar illustrate the complex realities of human movement. These screenings offer a cinematic perspective on migrant challenges, exploring both individual experiences and collective dynamics. Thanks to these documentariesviewers have the opportunity to delve into visual narratives that complement academic and artistic discussions, enriching the dialogue around the migration issue. Among these films, the festival presented on January 15 “In suspense” of Francesco Clerici and theContemporary Maghreb Research Institute. This documentary, filmed in 2023, takes us to the heart of the migratory journeys of people fromSub-Saharan Africa towards the Tunisia. Through their raw and poignant testimonies, the film reveals the perilous paths they traveled, the racial and social discrimination that they endure, and the profound impact of migration policies on their lives and their bodies. The documentary shows these unique destinies, revealing the glaring inequalities in terms of mobility, which leave behind broken lives, oscillating between anguish, hope and suffering.
The Madar audience was also able to discover the short film “Field Flowers“. This documentary comes to life thanks to the Tunisian filmmaker Houssem Ghadeslong-time volunteer at theassociation Awledna. It delves into Awledna’s efforts to support migrants and refugees in Sousse in Tunisiaby telling the stories of its partners and beneficiaries. Through scenes of distribution of school books and medical aid, the film integrates the testimonies of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria. In the context of migration repression in Tunisia in 2023, the documentary highlights the positive impact of migration on Tunisian society, highlighting entrepreneurship and cultural exchange. The Festival also offered the documentaries “Mirage», «Que Sera Sera» et «Mer’chant singer».
-In “Mirage”, Tangier constitutes the setting of the residence ofEmeka Okereke et Mathangi Krishnamurthy. The duo of artists drift through the city and its particular landscape imprint, to draw reflections on the situation of the city of the Strait. “HAS Tangerthere are stratified layers of opacities – a phenomenon Mathangi described as “hiding in plain sight”. They (the locals) are stacked on top of each other to form layers that secretly and discreetly separate the indigenous populations from the outsiders,” writes Okereke. During the creative workshop that the duo hosted at Darna Theater in Tangier, narration has become an artistic medium in its own right producing a laboratory for new subjectivations, an emancipatory practice in the ontological sense of the term. “We don’t tell a story, we are the story,” the duo says.
In the film “Que Sera Sera», Wiame Haddad et Léa Morin produce research on the figure of the shipwrecked boat between the Moroccol’Algeria and the Tunisiasymbol of the extractivism of the maritime coasts of the Global South in the Anthropocene era, as much as the mythological figure par excellence of the initiatory journey. Interested in the subjectivities often excluded from dominant historical narratives, Léa Morin writes: “What remains when the sand, when the ocean, covers abandoned spaces and architectures: an Icelandic sardine boat washed up off the coast of Laayoune (the Que Sera Sera), a Spanish passenger ferry (of Canary Islands) abandoned at Tarfayaa mosque buried under the sand, sheds destroyed in the Khnifis lagoon. “Que Sera Sera”. Water, rust, mast, wind, sand, bow, waves, hulls, plants, stones, salt, paints, dunes, rocks, frames, moon, metal, birds… and stories.
In “Mer’chant», the artist Yemoh 777s collaborates with the Senegalese and Ivorian communities present, whose economic, commercial and cultural links with Morocco have continued for centuries, despite difficult current living conditions. The sounds of sewing machines, songs and the wind on the sand dunes form an ode to resilience and the re-imagining of sensitive border mapping. For its part, the documentary “Vote!“, directed by Aisbl Roots (Morocco) tells the story of Barnes, Joël and Abdou who leave their home countries in search of a better life. As they head towards the European “El Dorado”, they discover that their adventures are far from simple. Along the way, they encounter unexpected challenges and experiences. Their journey is one of fear, rejection, hope and resilience – an array of emotions that depicts the complexity of the migration experience.
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