Nass El Ghiwane - Taghounja

Taghounja (1980), Moroccan-Italian filmmaker Abdou Achouba’s ode to Sufi poet Abderrahman el Majdoub’s Qasidas starring Larbi Batma and Omar Sayed, two of the members of Nass El Ghiwane, who will also compose the film’s soundtrack. The film charts a quest for identity by two characters: one, a lyricist and musician (Batma), who strives to immerse himself in his country’s rich cultural heritage; the other, a young boy, who looks at the world around him through the eyes of innocence. Bringing to mind Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Uccellacci e Uccellini (1966), to whom the film is dedicated.

At Omar Sayed’s instigation, Larbi Batma desperately wanders through a mystical Morocco tirelessly collecting oral poetry, sounds and rhythms primarily drawn from popular music and the repertoire of the traditional religious brotherhoods (Gnawa, Aissawa, Heddawa, H’madcha, Jilala, etc.) While classified as fiction, Taghounja is, strictly speaking, a docu-fiction. However, its approach is markedly different from that of Transes (Maanouni’s essay film about Nass El Ghiwane). Instead of a biopic, it dramatizes the group’s lyrics, sometimes literally, within the sociopolitical life of the time. The parallel wanderings of the musician and the child mirroring the state of affairs of late 70s Morocco, a country still alienated by colonialism, neo-colonialism and the perversion of certain customs and traditions. The quest comes to nothing and Abdou Achouba refuses to give audiences an answer, preferring instead an open-ended conclusion.<å> Taghounja was awarded a prize at the Venice Film Festival and the Carthage Film Festival, and was widely acclaimed by French intellectuals and artists. However, the politicised audience of students at the Maison du Maroc in Paris gave Achouba a reserved welcome, reproaching him for not being critical enough of the regime. Moroccan film critic and Abdou’s former philosophy teacher Noureddine Saïl said in his weekly radio program, Écran noir, “You may like or dislike Taghounja, but you have to admit that the film includes certain shots that are on a par with works of art.”

Trances

 

The groundbreaking Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating, one-of-a-kind documentary by Ahmed El Maanouni, who filmed the four musicians during a series of electrifying live performances in Tunisia, Morocco, and France; on the streets of Casablanca; and in intimate conversations. Storytellers through song and traditional instruments, and with connections to political theater, the band became a local phenomenon and an international sensation, thanks to its rebellious lyrics and sublime, fully acoustic sound, which draws on Berber rhythms, Malhun sung poetry, and Gnawa dances. Both a concert movie and a free-form audiovisual experiment, bolstered by images of the band’s rapt audience, Trances is pure cinematic poetry.

The Oblivion Seeker - Isabelle Eberhardt

 

Civilization, that great fraud of our times, has promised man that by complicating his existence it would multiply his pleasures. ... Civilization has promised man freedom, at the cost of giving up everything dear to him, which it arrogantly treated as lies and fantasies. ... Hour by hour needs increase and are nearly always unsatisfied, peopling the earth with discontented rebels. The superfluous has become a necessity and luxuries indispensable. - Isabelle Eberhardt

Actress Juliet Stevenson retraces the journeys of turn-of-the-century traveler and writer Isabelle Eberhardt. BBC, 1994.

Isabelle Wilhelmine Marie Eberhardt (17 February 1877 – 21 October 1904) was a Swiss explorer and author. As a teenager, Eberhardt, educated in Switzerland by her father, published short stories under a male pseudonym. She became interested in North Africa, and was considered a proficient writer on the subject despite learning about the region only through correspondence. After an invitation from photographer Louis David, Eberhardt moved to Algeria in May 1897. She dressed as a man and converted to Islam, eventually adopting the name Si Mahmoud Saadi. Eberhardt's unorthodox behaviour made her an outcast among European settlers in Algeria and the French administration.

Eberhardt's acceptance by the Qadiriyya, an Islamic order, convinced the French administration that she was a spy or an agitator. She survived an assassination attempt shortly thereafter. In 1901, the French administration ordered her to leave Algeria, but she was allowed to return the following year after marrying her partner, the Algerian soldier Slimane Ehnni. Following her return, Eberhardt wrote for a newspaper published by Victor Barrucand and worked for General Hubert Lyautey. In 1904, at the age of 27, she was killed by a flash flood in Aïn Séfra.

Isabelle was a journalist and war correspondent. Her disguise helped her to penetrate the peoples of the Sahara to get to know their customs. In Aïn Sefra she met Lyautey, a general charged with the task of reestablishing order on the border between Algeria and Morocco. With him, Isabelle was able to enter the camps and observe the conflicts first-hand. Not only did she disguise herself as a man, she also observed military discipline and was treated the same way as the other soldiers. In 1904 Isabelle she met up with her husband in Aïn Sefra and in a flash flood their clay house collapsed on top of them. “I know that this way of life is dangerous, but the moment of danger is also the moment of hope,” she wrote. She published many articles during her lifetime, and after her death her diaries and fiction were published.

Yasmina et Autres Nouvelles by Isabelle Eberhardt translated by Ahcene Douas

Isabelle Eberhardt: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nomad by HEDI ABDEL-JAOUAD

Feminize Your Canon: Isabelle Eberhardt at The Paris Review

Islamic Mysticism (Spirituality) - The Sufi Way By Huston Smith

Islamic Mysticism (Spirituality) - The Sufi Way By Prof. Huston Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Israeli Dervish

Miki Cohen is a 58-year-old Israeli attracted to Sufi mysticism and the writings and philosophy of Rumi. We follow him to Kony, the resting place of Rumi in central Turkey and the religious centre for his followers, as he becomes the only Israeli granted access to the inner sanctum of the whirling Dervish order of Islam.

Sufi

For hundreds of millions of Sufi followers worldwide, music is at the heart of their tradition and a way of getting closer to God. From the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey to the qawwali music of Pakistan, Sufism has produced some of the worlds most spectacular music celebrated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Dalrymples film traces the shared roots of Christianity and Islam in the Middle East and discovers Sufism to be a peaceful, tolerant and pluralistic bastion against fundamentalism.

For more information, visit: http://www.worldmusic.net/wmn/news/it...

Hakim Bey

Anarchist Sufi and free thinker extraordibnaire Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey)talks about TAZ (Temporary autonomous zones) and how he sees the world.
Hakim Bey has a new book out: Black Fez Manifesto, Etc