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ABSTRACT
While the term ‘Mediterranean Sea’ refers primarily to a geographical category, recent scholarship contends that it is also a ‘contested concept’ used throughout history for ideological purposes. In the context of the Algeria-France relationship, the Mediterranean constitutes an especially complex entity. This article focuses on the shared visual economy between Algeria and France, and examines varying representations of the Mediterranean in three contemporary documentaries: Oujdi’s Perdus entre deux rives, les chibanis oubliés (2014), Bensmaïl’s Des vacances malgré tout (2000), and Leuvrey’s La traversée (2013). Oujdi’s Les chibanis is filmed in Marseille and documents the marginalisation of retired Algerian workers. A reading of the opening and closing images of the Mediterranean suggests that the documentary echoes current political debates on access to French benefits and calls for the inclusion of chibanis within French society. In Des vacances, Bensmaïl films a Paris-based family travelling to Algeria to visit family. In this real-life road-trip, the Mediterranean becomes a spatial questioning of national affiliations. The chronological pace underscores the geographical distance that separates Paris and Algiers, but also the emotional and cultural distance between the father and his family. Leuvrey’s La traversée presents the Mediterranean as an actual no-man’s land, a transitional space where passengers’ voices are liberated. The documentary is fragmented, non-linear and superimposes the verbal/historical over the visual/geographical to challenge exclusive definitions of identity. Ultimately, this article addresses the troubled, intertwined history between Algeria and France by analysing how through changing representations of the Mediterranean, Algerian and French identities are contested and negotiated.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, and especially Joseph Krause and Nabil Boudraa at Oregon State University for their 2014 Summer Institute, ‘Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia: Literature, the Arts, and Cinema since Independence’. I am grateful for their support and commitment to this project, and for the many discussions and connections they inspired among the Institute participants.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 http://www.mucem.org/fr/le-mucem/linstitution (accessed May 29, 2015).
2 http://www.mucem.org/en/mucem/museum-europe-and-mediterranean (accessed December 14, 2015).
3 http://www.mucem.org/en/node/849/. Interestingly, the Mucem’s claim to open (to) the world and to presumably highlight the world’s diversity plays on both its minority and dominant culture status. On the one hand, it stresses its geographical, political and cultural marginality as a unique capitale régionale that combined resources from both national and local entities (the website lists: Ville de Marseille, le département des Bouches-du-Rhône et la région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur). On the other hand, it claims to mediate ‘otherness’ (‘le rapport à l’Autre’) by presenting Mediterranean cultures that, significantly, it groups under a term in the singular form: ‘culture monde’. The ideological tension is reminiscent of the Quai Branly’s proclaimed desire to stand as a ‘crossroads between civilizations and cultures’ – under the leadership of France, literally and symbolically in the shadow of the near-by Eiffel Tower.
4 http://www.mucem.org/fr/le-mucem/linstitution (accessed May 29, 2015).
5 http://www.mucem.org/sites/default/files/asset/document/mucem_3volets_nuitducourt_def.pdf (accessed May 29, 2015).
Leuvrey’s Oh, tu tires ou tu pointes? (2013) is one of seven short films about Marseille and Camargue.
6 For instance, in At (H)ome (2013), Leuvrey investigates a 1962 nuclear testing gone wrong in the Algerian Sahara desert. In La Chine est encore loin (2008), Bensmaïl revisits the 1954 murders in the Aures area and documents the place of the revolution in contemporary Algeria. Bensmaïl’s interest lies in the relation between East-West, North-South, Modernity-Tradition and in the complexities of today’s Algeria. http://malek.bensmail.free.fr/biography.htm.
7 Entitled ‘Here and There. Franco-Algerian Stories’ (Ici et Là-bas. Histoires Franco-Algériennes) this separate section in El Watan documents the Franco-Algerian community: its diversity of age and experience, as well as its rich complexity and tensions. The titles within the section called ‘Between Two Countries’ (Entre deux pays) are self-explanatory: ‘Paris/Algiers’ ‘Between Here and There’ (Entre Ici et Là-Bas) ‘À cheval entre la France et l’Algérie’ (Stradling France and Algeria), etc. http://icietlabas.com/.
8 For instance, in Salut cousin! by Merzak Allouache (1996), Drôle de Félix by Ducastel and Martineau (2000), Exils by Tony Gatlif (2003), or, in a different register, L’italien by Olivier Barroux (2010), crossing the Mediterranean – or the need to do so – results from exile, alienation, or a complicated relationship between an Algeria born father and a French raised son.
9 Studies in French Cinema, 2014. Vol.14, No 3. In this recent issue devoted to documentary, the editors outline the historical, formal, and political role of this genre in French cinema.
10 The French documentary in context: genealogy, aesthetics, ethics. David Heinemann, Sharon Lin Tay. Studies in French Cinema, Citation2014. Vol. 14, No 3, 157–166.
11 For Bensmaïl in particular, documentary filmmaking is essential to both past and future history: ‘It is very important to record today’s memory, to record tomorrow’s archive’ (C’est très important d’enregistrer la mémoire contemporaine, d’enregistrer l’archive de demain) (translation is mine). http://euromedaudiovisuel.net/p.aspx?t=videos&mid=103&l=fr&did=1820 (accessed December 12, 2015).
12 In the context of Nazi concentration camps, the formal complexity of Alain Resnais’ Nuit et Brouillard poses the question of the role of individual memory and testimony through the sometimes jarring superimposition of light music, shocking concentration camp archival images and the melodious voice of Michel Bouquet reading the words of Auschwitz survivor Jean Cayrol (Nichols 134-5).
13 http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=personne&no=38279 (accessed December 11, 2015).
14 IMAJE Santé: 10 ans déjà (2011) deals with Marseille’s at risk youth and their social and medical workers. His 2012 Les enfants de l'ovale … Un essai qui transforme! is filmed in Morocco and documents the creation of a young rugby team and its transformative impact on the community, including its minorities. With Les chibanis (2014), Oujdi returns to Marseille to document the social and economic isolation of its older Algerian working class population.
15 To qualify for benefits, including the Aspa (Allocation de solidarité aux personnes âgées, designated for low income seniors) chibanis need to reside a minimum of six month a year in France. https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F16871. (accessed December 13, 2015). For M. Cheikh, 80 years old, ‘It’s too hard’ (C’est trop dur). He owes the French government about $20 000 because he had to extend his stay in Algeria: his daughter has a disability, his wife fell ill, and he needed to care for both of them. Ironically, M. Cheikh is guilty of ‘staying too long’ in Algeria [that year] when in fact, it is in France that he stayed too long. He has lived there for decades, for work, and then for retirement. Starting 1 January 2016, the law will slightly relax: low-income chibanis will have access to the ARFS (Aide à la Réinsertion Familiale et Sociale) when they don’t meet the residency requirement. (Rosenweg Citation2015).
16 After each renting a room for years in a building located in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, about thirty chibanis were evicted in February 2015. The plan is to relocate them in various government subsidised HLM apartments.
17 While it is a significant change, the measure still excludes chibanis such as the ones featured in Oujdi’s documentary: residing in France since their early twenties, now old and now living alone, with children born and raised outside of France. France: vers une naturalisation plus facile pour une partie des ‘chibanis’. Gaël Grilhot, September 23, 2014. http://www.rfi.fr/france/20140912-france-vers-une-naturalisation-plus-facile-une-partie-chibanis-immigration-retraite-nationalite.
18 ‘Une jambe ici, une jambe là-bas’. The phrase is a self-description from one of the chibanis from Oujdi’s documentary.
19 The observational mode of Des vacances allows for unmediated access to the voice and words of the participants. The soundtrack is free of voice-over commentary, music, or sound effect. The conversation is flowing freely, unrehearsed, and without what Nichols calls on-camera ‘overt intervention’ from the filmmaker (109).
20 Bensmaïl’s inclusion of archival images articulates his idea that tomorrow’s archives need to be filmed today. According to him, the documentary as a genre holds a key place in Algeria’s history because of the need to record ‘today’s memories’ (‘la mémoire contemporaine’) to produce ‘tomorrow’s archives’ (‘l’archive de demain’). http://www.euromedaudiovisuel.net/p.aspx?t=videos&mid=103&l=fr&did=1820.
21 Dossier de presse: http://www.ciclic.fr/sites/default/files/fichiers/lt-dp-web_2.pdf (accessed May 28, 2015).
22 When La traversée is screened in a special venue, it is often in the context of a special cultural or university event, on a topic related to immigration, such as ‘migration and exil’ or ‘interculturality’.
23 The Mediterranean is a recurring motive in the so-called ‘Beur’ literature. In La Gare du Nord, Djemaï narrates what ends up being a chibani’s last ‘return’ to Algeria. In Les ANI du Tassili, Tadjer focuses on one single Algiers-Marseille ferry boat ride and the conversations that emerge out of a diverse group of passengers.