REPRESENTING THE ALGERIAN WAR IN ALGERIAN CINEMA: LE VENT DES AURèS

摘要

The Algerian War has been evoked by numerous French films without ever becoming part of the French national consciousness, partly because of state censorship, self-censorship and controversies around issues such as torture. French films about the war have, however, met with a certain amount of critical attention. The same cannot be said of Algerian films about the war, which have often been dismissed out of hand as state propaganda. This article considers the development of Algerian cinema in the years immediately after the liberation from French colonial rule, and delineates the features of the dominant post-war mode known as cinéma moudjahid (freedom fighter cinema). There follows a close analysis of the representation of indigenous suffering in Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina's 1966 film Le Vent des Aurès. Paying particular attention to the representation of the female protagonist in her native landscape, the article will explore how Algeria, so often fantasized as empty of Algerians in French cinema and in colonialist thought, here becomes inhabited and dramatized according to indigenous spatial, religious and cultural concerns. Conclusions will be reached regarding the place of Le Vent des Aurès in Algerian national cinema and the ways in which the film transcends the spatial logic of colonial rule.