Cinema
About Some Meaningless Events
أحداث بلا دلالة
Mostafa Derkaoui · 1974
Synopsis
In the streets of the port and the popular bars of Casablanca, a team of filmmakers in search of a subject questions passers-by, mostly young people, about what they expect from the Moroccan cinema that is then being born; the answers come thick and fast, contradictory, and the team debates an independent national cinema. When a discontented worker kills his superior, accidentally according to the Berlinale, the inquiry changes its object: the filmmakers try to understand the context and motives of the act, and ask themselves whether they should show this man they have filmed.
Context
Back from Poland in January 1974, the filmmaker shot the film, with Abdelkrim Derkaoui behind the camera, thanks to the sale of works donated by painters such as Mohamed Melehi; actors from the municipal theatre, musicians and writers, including Mohamed Zafzaf, took part. Presented at a festival in Paris in 1975, it was immediately banned from exhibition and export, and circulated only in clandestine screenings, in Khouribga in 1977 according to Morocco World News. Léa Morin found the negative in 2016 at the Filmoteca de Catalunya, which restored it; the Berlinale showed it in February 2019.
Who it is for
A feature film in Arabic and in colour, of 76 minutes; restored in Barcelona, it has circulated since 2019 at festivals and in museums.
Prizes and reception
Banned as early as 1975 and long unseen; the MoMA sees in it a daring mixture of drama, documentary and improvisation.
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