CUEFUniversity Center for French Studies

Ikbal Zalila will briefly review the history of cinema in Tunisia, politics and its representation, real and imagined ruptures, the early modernity of certain seminal films, and the naturalistic monotony that prevailed for two decades, with a few bright spots here and there.

The speaker will not address "the image of"—the child, the woman, the Muslim, the Arab—in Tunisian films. Ikbal Zalila does not wish to indulge in culturalism or psychologism that negates art and the thematic specifications wisely internalized by filmmakers who remain prisoners of the mission assigned to them: that of expressing themselves no matter how. It is precisely this "how" that will be at the center of his thinking, but to do so, a change of perspective is needed.

He therefore deliberately positioned himself on the margins of Tunisian cinema, because it was from these margins that the most singular and radical films emerged, making possible a (re)birth of love for a certain kind of Tunisian cinema.

Ikbal Zalila is a professor of film aesthetics, film analysis, and documentary film at the University of Manouba (Tunis). A few years ago, he directed the Carthage Film Festival. An important figure in Tunisian cultural life, he chairs the Tunisian Association for the Promotion of Film Criticism (ATPCC). In 2010, he defended his doctoral thesis at Paris 1 University, which focused on Tunisian newsreels between 1956 and 1970.

This event is organized by film studies professors atUniversité Grenoble Alpes Aude Fourel, Robert Bonamy, and Jacopo Rasmi, as part of the seminar "Political Zones of Contemporary Cinema," Master's in Artistic Creation, UFR LLASIC.