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Abstract
This essay explores how the Moroccan film Le Temps du terrorisme uses the frame of the artistic/creative process to stage a study of religious fanaticism and its tragic consequences. Drawing on melorealism, the filmmaker uses tropes of comedy and farce already familiar to his theatre and television audiences, but he also layers his text with self-reflexive strategies of direct address and narrator as witness. These devices work to bridge the distance between fiction and reality, and author and audience. As filmmaker, Aziz Saâdallah forges a personal relationship between artist and viewer and carves out a space for a dialectics of the artistic process: demanding an active audience, posing questions and forcing the viewer to think. He thus seeks to raise debate across a wide range of spectators and poses complex questions of responsibility, tolerance and the role of artistic expression in the present-day times of terrorism.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing funding and support for this research, as well as Brahim Benbouazza for his advice, and the Festival International de Cinéma Vues d’Afrique in Montreal.
Notes
1. Arguably, this tone has been softened in the 2011 Constitution, which declares that ‘the person of the King is inviolable, and respect is due Him’ (Constituteproject.org Citation2012, 14).
2. I borrow this term from Valérie Orlando’s title of chapter 3 in Screening Morocco.
3. According to the Centre Cinématographique Marocain’s Bilan cinématographique Citation 2013 , Les Mécréants sold 31,364 tickets and Le Temps du terrorisme sold 13,960 tickets in the Moroccan box office during 2013 (Centre Cinématographique Marocain Citation2013).
4. ‘Do you know what brainwashing is? Exactly what religious extremists and terrorists are doing today.’
5. ‘Between us and them, there is an issue of confidence. This regime must leave. The protests are taking over other cities and those in charge are beginning to restrain their speeches.’
6. ‘My name is M’jid. I’m a filmmaker and single, but I’ve always wanted to have children.’
7. ‘This city has been through a lot of incidents. The most important was in March 1965. I was a student. We had been on strike and it had suddenly turned into an uprising. The army came after us and it was a real butchery. After the events of March 1965, military service became mandatory.’
8. ‘At the same time, they forced the Arab language on everyone while their own children were studying in European schools… and we are living the results of this today. In short, the day of the massacre I saw a helicopter descend; its door open; and a soldier with sunglasses and a machine gun in his hands.’
9. ‘Muslims have deceived themselves and Christians lost their way. And lost Jews and pagans do not know where to turn. The earthlings are two kinds: one has reason; but without religion. And the other has religion, but without reason.’
10. Viola Shafik has written about the beginnings of Arab theatre and the differences between the dramatic hero in Western drama who must confront ‘good and evil, known and unknown’ and Arab poets who would take ‘just one side, either extolling the pleasures of life or accepting death as an unalterable fate’ (Citation2007, 69).
11. ‘Silence. We’re shooting. Film: The Screenplay.’
12. ‘Beginning of the END.’