Independent film in Tunisia – curated by Ikbal Zalila

The independent film scene is generally presented as a homogeneous block formed in opposition to commercial cinema. In Tunisia, the particular historical developments in filmmaking and the democratization of the means of shooting has today engendered various types of independent films characterized by variety and dynamism. This programme is composed of eight short films which highlight as much as possible the diversity of the independent scene in terms of production budgets, thematic approach, and aesthetic choices.

With regards to the conditions of production, four films from the programme – The Fall, Fundo, The Tank and Abdelkrim Battleship – are considered "no budget films". They exist because young people came together motivated by a desire to make movies. Conversations and Madam Bahja are the outcome of a collaboration between two independent producers who in 2004 took the initiative to give visibility to ten young novice directors. Their project Ten Shorts, Ten Glances, a rather rigid exercise (two days of shooting, two sets), was realized with a tight budget and allowed for the discovery of new talents. The Crossing and The Drowning Fish are short films subsidized by the Ministry of Culture. They benefited from substantial budgets compared with the previous six films and were produced by independent producers.

On the thematic level, death, war and the desire to escape elsewhere are the strong threads that run through the programme. The fantasized elsewhere (through illegal immigration) is dealt with by The Fall, Abdelkrim Battleship and Nadia Touijer`s The Crossing, and "the elsewhere" as a no man’s land is what the eccentric of Fundo goes adrift towards. Meanwhile death is what Madam Bahja dreads, and what the mother and her daughter wish for the tyrannical father in The Drowning Fish. An off-camera war is at the origin of the wounded soldiers’ friendship in Conversations, and a parody of war emerges with the story of scarce water resources in The Tank.

It seems premature to speak about a new wave cinema in Tunisia. This programme of short films concentrates on the various alternatives which offer themselves to the Tunisian cinema of tomorrow. The avant-garde – with its aesthetics of the break, its concern with formal questions and its sober and purified direction – is embodied by The Fall, Fundo, Abdelkrim Battleship and to a lesser degree by The Tank, in spite of its didactic tone. The Crossing, with its documentary aesthetics and its inclination to de-dramatize, distances itself from the naturalism omnipresent in the Tunisian cinema. Conversations, in its restraint and modesty, avoids the stumbling blocks of pathos and sentimentality. Madame Bahja probably stands as the birth certificate of a strong writer of dialogue and a promising filmmaker. The academicism of its directorial vision is compensated for by its sense for a successful formula and an excellent control of the situation’s comedic potential. The Drowning Fish, a crazy and furious film, succeeds thanks to very precise work on rhythms and colours, which blows up the registers of slapstick comedy.