Formalism Beyond Realism - curated films by Ikbal Zalila

The Tunisian program for Arab Shorts 2010 focuses on the current stylistic range found in the independent cinema scene in Tunisia. A stylistic gap between the work of established filmmakers and what can be described as “the cinema of the margins” is growing due to a number of factors.

One pertains to the rigidity and poverty of current cinematic positions that characterize mainstream Tunisian cinema, which had built its credibility in the mid-eighties on its capacity for transgressing social taboos. But despite this thematic shift, not much has changed in the last two decades on the formal level (more specifically through a scan of mise-en-scène.This cinematic conservatism can be explained by a lack of a productive environment for new filmmakers, which is mainly due to an unwritten rule according to which a director has to be in his/her forties to benefit from state production grants. And since it was impossible until ten years ago to make films without state subsidies, this explains the lack of diversity that characterized Tunisian cinema between the eighties and the beginning of this century. Paradoxically, naturalistic realism can be regarded both as the benchmark for cinematography as well as its main undermining factor.More ...