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Spring 2008 | ArteZine

“Ah, Nostalgia, Nostalgia…”

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Daikha Dridi interviews Aziz Mihrab, founder of ciné-clubs in Casablanca and history teacher.

Aziz Mihrab established and animated ciné-clubs as a trotskyite militant in Casablanca’s popular neighborhoods in the 1970s and 1980s. At 54 years of age today, he chose to sit in favorite café in Sidi Dernoussi, where on occasion he still screens films, to recall the years of militancy and cinéphilia.

 

Available here in French (PDF). 

 

You established several ciné-clubs in Casablanca, could you describe the circumstances? 

Firstly, in 1975, I was a member of a ciné-club myself, known as the “Ciné-Club Les Volontés” in Casablanca, until 1977, when with friends we decided to establish a ciné-club we dubbed “Cinéma l’Action”. The ciné-clubs at that time were not as we come across them nowadays, they were principally places of encounter to the new left. At that time, two important factions prevailed, the maoists and the trotskyites. The ciné-club was a realm vested primarily by people who were driven by political activism. The regime was repressive, it prohibited militant political parties, we were clandestine organizations and established ciné-clubs for political objectives and nothing else.

The initiative to establish your own ciné-club in 1977 was embedded in that framework of political activism?

The idea was to express our political opinions using the bias of the ciné-club, I was in the trotskyite faction, the workers party. The majority prevailing over the ciné-club “Les Volontés” were maoists. We were a minority of trotskyites, and established our own ciné-club to express ourselves without constraints.

Did the selection of films change when you established your own ciné-club?

We screened a lot of Russian films… evidently (laughter). They were a kind of platform for debate. I remember we screened Eisenstein’s films, Battleship Potemkin, but also The Assassination of Trotsky (by Joseph Losey, 1972), State of Siege (“Etat de siège” by Costa Gavras, 1972), Sacco and Vanzetti (“Sacco e Vanzetti” by Giuliano Montaldo, 1971); we also screened Arab films like Youssef Chahine’s The Sparrow (“al-Usfur”, 1972), a film produced after 1967 that criticized the Arab defeat against Israel.

Your audience was only from the extreme left?

Not at all! The majority of our public was not militant at all. The active elements of the ciné-club, were indeed militants, but the audience included high-school and university students, men, women…

In which neighborhood was the ciné-club founded? What was the social and political context?

The neighborhood was ‘Ain Essouk, a very popular sector in Casablanca. It is where the authorities committed a massacre in June of 1981 during the hunger riots, under the reign of Hassan II, there were deaths and injuries, airplanes were firing at people…

Politically, we, the militants were the Moroccan 68-generation, it was after May 1968 in France, after the Arab defeat of 1967. The regime was governed by a single autocratic man, it was a dictatorship.

How did that impact on the ciné-club’s activities? 

You know, when you establish a ciné-club, even if you have a political agenda, you are not strictly engaged in political activism, there is also culture. We debated Maxim Gorky, Tolstoy, we screened Crime and Punishment (“Crime et Châtiment” by Georges Lampin, 1956) we discussed Jean-Paul Sartre…

But the impact of political militantism did not totally eliminate the idea of cinema and culture in ciné-clubs?

Aaaah… yes, that is also true… (laughter). I recall that there were intellectuals that criticized us and accused us of exploiting art and literature for strictly political ends. And I agree that it hurts literature and art, but at the time it was like that…

Is it because these were the only venues where you found the freedom to express your political ideas?

Yes, nowadays, there are margins of democracy, but at the time it could only happen in the midst of ciné-clubs and of amateur theater.

How did the non-militant public react to the films and discussions?

The themes of the films we picked were always of a leftist coloring, but the genres were varied. At the time we did not really pay attention to cinematographic schools or forms, the discussions never addressed a cinematographic reading proper, to us militants, the most important thing was invariably the film’s subject…

On a personal level, what drove you to become so involved in the ciné-club?

There was a federation of Moroccan ciné-clubs, and I was part of it. After “Cinéma l’Action”, I established the “Cinema Nouveau” in ‘Ain Sebaa, another popular neighborhood in Casablanca, and I co-founded another ciné-club in Marrakesh. At that time, I would establish a ciné-club and then handed it over to the activists and went on to establish another one elsewhere because the political organization I was affiliated to had entrusted me with this mission. It was my work, my task. We went to neighborhoods to establish what we wanted as loci for the blossoming of Marxist-Leninist trotskyite thought, to criticize the military regime and demystify the bourgeoisie.

When did all of this come to an end?

It went on until my arrest in 1984. I was detained for my affiliation to a “clandestine organization” and because I was a militant and organized cells in worker’s centers. I was in jail for 24 months.

After your release you did not want to resume your activities in ciné-clubs?

No, I have become involved in writing in a variety of Arabic publications in Morocco. I also teach history in high schools. I dedicate a lot of my time to working with labor unions.

Are there ciné-clubs in Morocco today?

Yes, they exist, in cultural centers of embassies, like the Goethe Institute, the French Cultural Center, etc.

It is no longer the same atmosphere… 

No, it is not the same thing (laughter)… I work under different skies (laughter), I am involved in cultural cafés, I established one here, in the neighborhood where I live, we had three screenings this year, in this very same café from where I am talking to you. We screened German films and a lot of amateur Moroccan films.

How do you regard the period when ciné-clubs thrived in Morocco, but also that approach of coming to love cinema as part of political engagement?

Ah… nostalgia, nostalgia! They were the good old days.

Today Moroccans watch only TPS and Hotbird, the free-of-charge television channels from French cable, that don’t show good films… and commercial theaters are a catastrophe, they have become places of encounter for lovers and homosexuals, places to claim a moment in the anonimity of the dark.

 

Photo: 1925 film poster for “Battleship Potemkin.”

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