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| Assia Djebar: ( نوبة نساء جبل شنوة) / Nwbat nisa Jabal Shanwat / La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua / The Nubah of the Women of Mount Chenoua (DZ 1978). |
( نوبة نساء جبل شنوة)
DZ 1978. Prod.: Ahmed Sedjane, Cherif Abboun, Hamni Farid per Radio Télévision Algérienne.
Director: Assia Djebar. Scen.: Assia Djebar. F.: Ahmed Sedjane, Cherif Abboun. M.: Nicole Schlemmer, Areski Haddadi. Int.: Zohra Sahraoui, Aïcha Medeljar, Fatma Serhan, Kheira Amrane, Fatma Oudai, Khedija Lekhal, Noweir Sawsan. DCP. 115’. Col.
Assia Djebar created two versions: an Arabic one and a French one. Only one version survives.
In Arabic and French.
Restored in 2024 by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with EPTV and the Cinémathèque Algérienne. Restoration funded by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Special thanks to Ahmed Bejaoui. Restored in 4K from a 16 mm print which is believed to be the only surviving print of this film. Colour grading was finalised with the help of Ahmed Bejaoui.
DCP from The Film Foundation - sous-titres français (n.c.) in the source print.
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Cinemalibero
Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in English and Italian (n.c.), 29 June 2024
The film's opening text was not translated in the screening: “This film, in the form of a nouba, is dedicated, posthumously, to Hungarian musician Béla Bartók, who had come to a nearly mute Algeria to study its folk music in 1913; and to Yaminai Oudai, known as Zoulikha, who organised a resistance network in the city of Cherchell and its mountains in 1955 and 1956. She was arrested in the mountains when she was in her forties. Her name was subsequently added to the list of the missing. Lila — the protagonist in this film — could be Zoulikha’s daughter. The six other talking women of Chenoua recount fragments of their lives. The Nouba of the Women is their moment. But the Nouba is also the Nouba of the Andalusian music in its particular rhythmic movements.“
"Tourné au printemps 1976, La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua met en scène Lila, une architecte de trente ans de retour dans ses montagnes natales du Chenoua, en compagnie de sa fille et de son mari handicapé des jambes après un accident. Entre fiction, images documentaires et incursions littéraires, ce premier film de l’écrivaine documente et orchestre un va-et-vient incessant entre mémoire, histoire et présent, nourri de la musique de Béla Bartók (1881-1945) qui séjourna en Algérie en 1906 et surtout en 1913 afin d’y étudier la musique populaire. Ce film lui est dédié en même temps qu’à Zoulikha, une héroïne de la guerre d’indépendance à laquelle Assia Djebar consacrera La Femme sans sépulture en 2002." (The film's opening text was not translated in the screening)
Ahmed Bejaoui (Bologna 2024 Catalogue): " This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the FEPACI and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore and disseminate African cinema. "
" When she decided to express herself behind the camera, Assia Djebar had not written a novel in ten years… I met Assia Djebar at the cinémathèque in Algiers, where she was a regular presence. She had confessed to me her particular admiration for two filmmaker-auteurs: Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1976, after knocking on several doors that remained closed, Assia Djebar arrived at the RTA (Algerian Radio-Television) to propose a scenario that she wanted to film herself. I was the director of the production department at the time. "
" In La Nouba, the female eye creates a cinematographic space, bringing the monocular vision of the camera lens closer to the single-eyed gaze behind the Haik, the traditional veil worn by our mothers."
"Many believe that La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (along with Nahla) is the most compelling film of cinematographic ideas that Algerian cinema has ever produced."
"The director explores the women and their war for independence through a subtle blend of archival documents and audiovisual recreations of women’s oral stories. With its five movements, the work is constructed like a Nouba, a reference to the elaborate structure of the Arab-Andalusian musical genre."
"Intrigued by Béla Bartók’s research on popular Algerian music in 1913, Assia Djebar would have liked to have made a second feature, but explained, “I very quickly ran into difficulties. Generally speaking, La Nouba was poorly received. The press ridiculed my ‘feminist’ images, which ran counter to the socialist realism favoured at the time.”"
"Shortly afterwards, I showed the film to Carlo Lizzani, the newly appointed director of the Venice Film Festival, who selected it for the official competition. We attended the festival together in early September 1979. In front of an enthralled Italian audience, the film won the FIPRESCI prize, the only one given that year by the journalists."
"The day following the screening, Assia Djebar wrote me: “I must admit that this distinction, which I had not expected, warmed my heart. Especially after this long year of Algerian ‘protests’ over the film, it seems like a vindication of Carthage. We certainly deserved it.” " Ahmed Bejaoui (Bologna 2024 Catalogue)
AA: Zoulikha Oudai (1911-1957) was an Algerian liberation heroine during the French occupation. She was in charge of the FLN in Cherchell, an ancient port city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Cherchell is French for the Arabic Shersel, itself deriving from the Latin name Caesarea and the Greek name Kaisareia.
Assia Djebar (1936-2015), born in Cherchell, was the first Algerian and Muslim woman educated at France's elite schools. She was elected to the Académie française as the first writer from the Mahgreb. She was also a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
...
I confess that this movie is my first encounter with the work of Assia Djebar. I am grateful to discover an original poetic voice. The Nubah of the Women of Mount Chenoua is a high accomplishment.
Although Djebar was a woman of letters, The Nubah is pure cinema. It is rooted in the immediate experience - the time and space - the presence - the flow of existence in the temporal perspective. It belongs to the Lumière legacy in the cinema. Recurrent motifs such as the sea and the birds (the dynamism of the air) affirm this. A further motif, the lighthouse / the watchtower connects the elements of the sea and the air. It is a mediator and also a symbol of transcendence.
Poetic images range from hard realism to fairy-tales. Dreams can be an escape valve but also a vision of the future.
The past is always present in a city like Cherchell with ubiquitous walls of ancient fortresses, a mighty dome and a tomb of Juba. There are remains from Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Carthage and Rome since before the Empire ("Carthago delenda est"). La Nouba is a very concrete and specific memory journey and at the same time a meditation about the persistence and the ephemeral quality of memory.
Its title, structure and rhythm The Nubah adopts from music, another temporal art form. I learn that nubah has Andalusi origins and flourishes in the Mahgreb. The nubah is women's music, and their authentic performances with indigenous instruments are haunting. In her film, Djebar channels the tradition via Béla Bartók, who was fascinated by the nubah. Djebar introduces atonal passages from him. She also obeys the nubah's five part structure:
Istikhbar: prelude
Meceder: adagio
Btoihi: allegro
Nesraf: moderato
Khlass: finale
The Nubah is a polyphonic movie. The architect Laila, the protagonist, with her family consisting of a husband and two children, comes home to Cherchell, 15 years after the War of Independence. Six women contribute testimonies of "the revolution of the million martyrs". Women such as Zoulikha Oudai played a central role, but in the patriarchal order of Algeria they are being forgotten.
It is a memory quest. "Then I wandered in the past in my memories". "On these mountains we were free". "I was 15 - with a 100 years of a suffering" is the central refrain. "I had become a stranger in my country". The world has changed. It is not only about liberation after colonialism. It is also modernity after tradition. Laila is already living through "scenes from a marriage" such as described in an Ingmar Bergman movie.
Algerian memories appear in a context of documentary war montages. The destruction, the forest fires, the screams of agony. Helping partisans by hiding them or providing them with supplies could result in hideous retributions in the hands of French occupation forces. The blood and screams of the victims are not forgotten. Even memories are broken.
But the final communal sing-along of the women is dedicated to freedom. The haik (the veil) has been lifted. "God protect woman martyrs". "Women shall never return to the shadows". "The sun of freedom has risen". "Everything will bloom again". "Zoulikha still lives in the mountains".
The restoration has been conducted from difficult source materials. Despite the low definition and the fading of the colour towards monochrome the overwhelming experience is that of a triumph of the spirit. Even visually the impact is that of a tender willpower that resists even "the corruption of moth and rust".
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM WIKIPEDIA:
