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| Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis (Fadhel Jaïbi, Fadhel Jaziri, Jalila Baccar, Mohamed Driss, Habib Masrouki): // العرس //Al ôrs / La noce / The Wedding Party (TN 1978) with Jalila Baccar (the bride). |
// العرس //
TN 1978. Prod.: Collectif Nouveau Théâtre.
Director: Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis. F.: Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis (Fadhel Jaïbi, Fadhel Jaziri, Jalila Baccar, Mohamed Driss, Habib Masrouki). B&w. M.: Larbi Ben Ali. Int.: Jalila Baccar (the bride), Fadhel Jaziri (Mostafa), Mohamed Driss (the groom), Mostafa Nagbou (Ismaïl), Béchir Labbene (bride’s father).
91 min
In Arabic.
Soundtrack: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" (1928, comp. Kurt Weill, lyr. Bertolt Brecht) sung by Lotte Lenya.
Restored in 4K by Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema in association with the Direction Générale des Arts Scéniques et Audiovisuelles du Ministère Tunisien des Affaires Culturelles, Collectif Nouveau Théâtre and Association Ciné-Sud Patrimoine at Cineric Portugal laboratory, from a 35 mm duplicate negative (wet-gate scan) and a 35 mm optical soundtrack. Restoration supervised by Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema in collaboration with director Fadhel Jaziri.
DCP with English subtitless from Cinemateca Portuguesa.
Courtesy of Nouveau Film.
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.
Introduced by Jalila Baccar, Rui Machado (Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema) e X. Hosted by Cecilia Cenciarelli.
Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in Italian, 27 June 2025.
Hédi Khélil (Bologna 2025): "I place Al Ôrs by the Nouveau Théâtre at the pinnacle of Tunisian cinema. The 1978 film, directed by Fadhel Jaïbi, Fadhel Jaziri, Jalila Baccar, Mohamed Driss and Habib Masrouki originated from a play of the same name, staged and performed by the same ensemble in 1976."
"The work – which plunges us into the tragicomic world of petits-bourgeois newlyweds, shattered and defeated – has appeared and reappeared on the Tunisian cinematographic landscape as a motion picture so distant and remote, unlike anything else, claiming no clear lineage, made with very limited means. Amid the Cinema within the theatre and the Theatre within the cinema – mirrored arts, organically linked – the members of the Nouveau Théâtre go forth like sleepwalkers, suspended between nightmare and reality, angelism and satanism, along a path of resolute solitude."
"Upon recently rewatching Al Ôrs, my attachment to the film was more strongly affirmed than ever. What is immediately – and eternally – striking about this film, is the richness of its signifiers, its formal complexity of the oeuvre, and the thoughtfully-crafted beauty of each shot. Al Ôrs is a rhapsody of scattered material that merge into a unified whole, where all its facets seamlessly fit together. There is continuity in the movement, continuity in the duration, continuity in the analogy, cycles and returning cycles."
"Never before in Tunisian cinema has there existed such a hyper-presence of bodies, enhanced by the lighting that diffracts and divides more than it brings together or unites. The lighting is not orchestrated shot by shot, but rather set once and for all, in different spaces, ready to accommodate the shooting of each scene."
"Al Ôrs is a film that was conceived, experienced and worked on as homage to Habib Masrouki, co-founder of the Nouveau Théâtre and the work’s cinematographer, an artist who tragically took his own life. If the image enthrals, it is thanks to him. If the tone is so disillusioned and incisive, terribly lucid and prescient, it is because it is also his own." Hédi Khélil (Bologna 2025)
AA: The Wedding Party by the Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis was reportedly inspired by Bertolt Brecht's A Respectable Wedding (Die Hochzeit / Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit, 1919), but I was rather reminded of August Strindberg's The Dance of Death (Dödsdansen, 1900) and its definitive film adaptation, Marcel Cravenne's La Danse de mort (FR 1948) starring Erich von Stroheim as Edgar and his wife Denise Vernac as Théa. We can also think about La Poison, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Le Chat and El diablo entre las piernas.
Yet The Wedding Party is an original, an intimate Kammerspiel odyssey, as black as can be, out-Strindberging Strindberg as an essay on the marriage inferno. There is nothing more fearsome than love that turns to hate.
The Wedding Party is actor-driven. Jalila Baccar as the bride and Mohamed Driss as the groom disgrace themselves and all humankind profoundly in a Laurel & Hardy style mutual destruction play. The darkness is relentless and unforgiving.
The visual quality is dismal due to the production's zero budget genesis. The raw edge is an intentional means of expression.
The Wedding Party also finds its place among cinematic records of important experimental theatre productions, including early Fassbinder (Action-Theater, antiteater) and Shirley Clarke's The Connection (The Living Theatre).
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