Cinema
Mektoub
Synopsis
According to the period synopsis reproduced by the blog Mangin@Marrakech, Ould Tahar, son of a rich notable of the Rehamna tribe, leads a dissolute life; the pasha of Marrakesh, to turn him away from it, appoints him caid of the Draa valley. A singer, Tamou, has fallen in love with him, while he himself loves Saadia, the pasha's niece. Sent to bring his rebellious tribe back to obedience, he lets himself be won over by the revolt, until the day the sultan's army marches against the Rehamna.
Context
The film was shot in 1918, according to Mangin@Marrakech, in Marrakech and among the Rehamna, the blog disputing the mentions of Tangier and Casablanca; chronologies of Moroccan cinema date it to 1919. The screenplay is by Edmond Doutté, an anthropologist familiar with the country. Africiné places it in colonial cinema, where the country serves as an exotic backdrop; the blog rejects this classification, since the plot features only Moroccans, and gives Saïda Beni Saïd, who played the singer, as the first Moroccan actress.
Who it is for
A silent film from the end of the Great War; no surviving copy or recent screening is known.
Prizes and reception
Cited by histories of cinema in Morocco as the first feature-length fiction film shot in the country.
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