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15 - ‘Women, use the gaze to change reality’
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- By Katarina Hedrén, freelance writer and the co-programmer of the Johannesburg-based First Wednesday Film Club, Jyoti Mistry, filmmaker and associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in the School of Arts, Antje Schuhmann, works as senior lecturer in the Political Studies department and the Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
- Edited by Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann
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- Book:
- Gaze Regimes
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 20 April 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2015, pp 182-187
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Summary
Katarina Hedren is a film programmer and festival organiser, as well as a discussion and workshop moderator/facilitator, and a writer, translator -and interpreter in different contexts related to the cultural industries. She has worked with various producers, organisations and film festivals such as Women of the Sun, an advocacy organisation for African woman filmmakers, the Tri-Continental Human Rights Film Festival and the international documentary conference, People to People. She is one of two co-programmers for the First Wednesday Film Club, an independent Johannesburg-based film club which has become an institution among film- and TV-industry professionals and film enthusiasts. Her writing has appeared in Swedish, South African and pan-African publications and websites, including the Swedish film publication FLM, the Stockholm International Film Festival's catalogue, The Times, Africa is a Country and Africine. Katarina is the author of the blog ‘In the Words of Katarina’. Before moving to South Africa from Sweden she was a board member and the chairperson of the Swedish-African film festival CinemAfrica between 2001 and 2005. In addition to offering Swedish cinemagoers otherwise hard-to-access quality films made by African filmmakers from Africa and its diasporas, CinemAfrica's goal is to spread nuanced portrayals of Africa and Africans.
JYOTI MISTRY: You have quite an extraordinary position in being able to navigate between multiple spaces, not just in terms of where you live and work but in the kinds of access you have curating and advising on African cinema for Scandinavian film festivals and film programmes. Can you offer some observations on the experiences and some of the complexities and challenges: not just in terms of the expectations but also the kind of content that is favoured and created in Africa?
KATARINA HEDRÉN: The lack of financial and infrastructural resources available to create viable African film industries is a huge problem. African filmmakers often spend more time trying to find money than focusing on aesthetics and storytelling concerns. In most cases filmmakers either make self-financed films, or they rely on the support of institutions with specific mandates and not enough regard for aesthetics and artistic concerns. Many African films deal with interesting or pressing issues, but not all of them do so in a cinematic way.
14 - Barakat! means Enough!
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- By Katarina Hedrén, freelance writer and the co-programmer of the Johannesburg-based First Wednesday Film Club
- Edited by Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann
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- Book:
- Gaze Regimes
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 20 April 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2015, pp 174-181
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
In her debut feature Barakat!, (2006) Algerian filmmaker, Djamila Sahraoui portrays two women who, out of desperation, fear, or simply because ‘they are done’ with being oppressed and victimised, take control of their own destinies. In the early 2000s, Sahraoui became part of a cohort of North African women filmmakers who made films that suggested new ways of seeing – and being – women: Yamina Bachir's Rachida (Algeria, 2002), Nadia El Fani's Bedwin Hacker (Tunisia, 2003) and Yasmine Kassari's The Sleeping Child (Morocco, 2004). These women filmmakers of the Maghreb developed original and pioneering filmic techniques to address oppression and victimisation of women in society.
Sahraoui's film warrants close analysis since it offers a nuanced insider's perspective on the experiences of Muslim women in Algeria living through political revolution and social change. The narrative and characters provide a layered representation of how women strategically navigate the expectations of when to veil and when to choose to be unveiled. Moreover, the narrative point of view from two different generations of women provides a political foil that enables the director to offer a commentary on the contemporary experiences of women in Algeria. In the cohort of films produced by North African women filmmakers Barakat! presents an unflinching point-of view of the multiple layers of women's subjectivities.
Algeria gained independence in 1962 after a liberation war that lasted nearly ten years. The war, which contributed to the brutalisation of the country for decades, was referred to as ‘the Algerian events’ by France (the former coloniser) for the official reason that the Algerian nation did not formally exist at the time.
When anti-government demonstrations broke out in 1988, the Algerian government, led by the National Liberation Front (FNL) first responded violently, before agreeing to political reform. This, in turn, led to the formation of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). This Islamist party was doing exceptionally well in the first round of Algeria's 1991 election until the military, out of fear that FIS would be voted into power, annulled the ongoing elections. Soon after, a state of emergency, which lasted until 2011, was declared.