Raja Amari | |
|---|---|
 Raja Amari official photo | |
| Born | April 4, 1971 |
| Nationality | Tunisian |
| Education | French Literature, University of Tunis |
| Alma mater | University of Tunis |
| Occupation | Film director |
Raja Amari (born 4 April 1971) is a Tunisian film director [1] and script writer. She is best known for her films Satin Rouge/Red Satin (2002), and Dowaha/Les Secrets/Buried Secrets (2009), both of which have earned international awards and recognition.
Born in Tunis, Amari trained in dance at the Conservatoire de Tunis, gaining first prize in dance in 1992. [1] She then studied Italian at the Società Dante D'Alighieri in Tunis and later studied French Literature at the University of Tunis. For two years she wrote for Cinécrits, a film magazine edited by the "Association Tunisienne pour la promotion de la critique cinematographic." In 1995, Amari attended FEMIS (L'Institut de Formation et d'Enseignement pour les Metiers de l'Image et du Son) in Paris [2] to study screenwriting. [3] After graduating in 1998, she began to work on her film portfolio. [3] Her film Satin Rouge was screened at la Berlinale 2002. Her film Buried Secrets was an official selection at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival.
Raja Amari has been said to have a "transvergent" style in her work. Stacey Weber-Fève, argued Amari's style means her work transcends national cinema and has the ability to connect with a "national identity" depending on the given context and temporality of her films. [4] Will Higbee furthers the idea of "transvergent" filmmaking as a cinema that, "views the exchange between the global and the local not as taking place within some abstract or undefined 'global framework'." Rather, "difference and imbalances of power" between and within film industries tend to shape cinema. [5]
When asked about her influences, Amari responded in an interview with Indiewire that they include François Ozon and Arnaud Desplechin. [6]
"I have always wanted to make a film revolving around belly dancing. I trained for many years as a belly dancer at the Conservatoire de Tunis [Academic Dance Institute in Tunis]. I also grew up watching musicals of the golden age of Egyptian cinema from the 1940s and 1950s that are still played on television today. My mother and I loved the well-known belly dancer Samia Gamal and the singer Farid al-Atrash." -Raja Amari, Interview with Bouziane Daoudi in Zeitgeist Films [1]
Satin Rouge follows widowed Tunisian mother Lilia, (Hiam Abbas) as she radically transforms from housewife to cabaret dancer. Her transformation begins when she becomes suspicious of her teenage daughter, Selma (Hend el Fahem) of engaging in a secret relationship with Chokri (Maher Kamoun), a darbouka drummer in Selma's dance class. To find out more, Lilia decides to follow Chokri one day. On her escapade, she follows him into his second workplace: a cabaret club. After overcoming her initial shock, Lilia becomes drawn towards the dancers and drum music. The women are very different from Lilia: they wear colourful clothing, they are showing their midriffs, and they are dancing in a sensual manner to the drumbeat. After befriending the lead dancer, Folla (Monia Hichri), Lilia is convinced to start dancing in the cabaret club. While Lilia begins dancing nightly, she simultaneously begins a romantic relationship with Chokri, who is still unaware that Lilia is Selma's mother. When Chokri ends his affair with Lilia, she is heartbroken. She later finds out it is because Selma has asked Chokri to meet her and Chokri, realizing his relationship with Selma is getting serious, accepts. The uneasy 'first' meeting Selma organizes between Chokri and Lilia solidifies Lilia's full transformation. When at the start of the film she is seen as a sad, bored, and submissive woman who rarely leaves the comforts of home, she is now a dominant matriarchal figure, which is reestablished with Lilia's glance in the mirror at herself prior to Chokri and Selma's arrival. [3]
"Typically, in Arab films and Tunisian films you have a woman who is in conflict with the society, and she'll fight against it. I didn't want that. That was not my subject. Lilia, the character played by Haim Abbass, actually finds her freedom in the context of what I call social hypocrisy. She is involved in a society that is hypocritical in the sense that there are two worlds out there: the world of the night and the world of the day. What you do--what you really do--you do not show. She finds a compromise in the sense that society is like that. She just adapts to society. She does what she wants, but she doesn't show it to the world." [7] -Raja Amari, Indiewire, August 20, 2002
Amari’s work, particularly Red Satin has been argued to have opened up new avenues and opportunities for the portrayal of Tunisian women in film and society. Author Stacey Weber-Fève asserts that Amari’s portrayal of the protagonist, Lilia, performing housework in the first few scenes of the film, “captures concretely the possibility for (re)appropriating female representation in contemporary North African cinema.” [4] She also asserts that Amari, “levies new debates addressing interpretations of performances of women’s traditional roles and desire for self-expression in contemporary Tunisian society by engaging in a multilayered manner the ideological implications of this traditional social construct of the housewife and her comportment.” [4]
In Melissa Thackway and Olivier Bartlet's review of the 2015 Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou, FESPACO) in "FESPACO 2015: After the Transition, What Next?", they remark that Amari's film about the Tunisian Spring was the only film that stood out among the 'Features' portion of the festival. They noted that the film was "a quality television drama about a group of young musicians' diverging response to the turbulence of the Arab Spring." [8]
Raja Amari currently resides in Paris, France. [4]
| Year | Award | Film | Result | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Special Jury Prize at Milano Film Festival | Avril/April | Won | [3] |
| 1998 | Special Jury Prize at Tunis Short Films Festival | Avril/April | Won | [3] |
| 1998 | Best Cinematography Award at International Short Film Festival, Greece | Avril/April | Won | [3] |
| 1998 | Prix de la Qualité at Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC) | Avril/April | Won | [1] |
| 2001 | First Prize at Milan Festival | Un soir de juillet/An Evening in July | Won | [1] |
| 2001 | Golden Dhow (Best short feature film) at Zanzibar Film Festival | Un soir de juillet/An Evening in July | Won | [1] |
| 2002 | New Director's Showcase Award at Seattle International Film Festival | Satin rouge/Red satin | Won | [6] |
| 2002 | Best African Film Award at Montreal World Film Festival | Satin rouge/Red satin | Won | [11] |
| 2002 | Audience Award Maine International Film Festival | Satin rouge/Red satin | Won | [1] |
| 2002 | Best Feature Film Award at Torino Film Festival | Satin rouge/Red satin | Won | [12] |
| 2002 | Special Mention for William Holden Screenplay Award at Torino Film Festival | Satin rouge/Red satin | Won | [12] |
Cinema of Africa is both the history and present of the making or screening of films on the African continent, and also refers to the persons involved in this form of audiovisual culture. It dates back to the early 20th century, when film reels were the primary cinematic technology in use. During the colonial era, African life was shown only by the work of white, colonial, Western filmmakers, who depicted Africans in a negative fashion, as exotic "others". As there are more than 50 countries with audiovisual traditions, there is no one single 'African cinema'. Both historically and culturally, there are major regional differences between North African and sub-Saharan cinemas, and between the cinemas of different countries.
Hiam Abbass, also Hiyam Abbas, is a Palestinian actress and film director.
The cinema of Senegal is a relatively small film industry which experienced its prime from the 1960s through to the early 1980s, but has since declined to less than five feature films produced in the last ten years.
Moufida Tlatli was a Tunisian film director, screenwriter, and editor. She is noted for her breakthrough film The Silences of the Palace in 1994, which won several international awards. She went on to direct two more films: The Season of Men (2000) and Nadia and Sarra (2004).
The cinema of Tunisia began in 1896, when the Lumière brothers began showing animated films in the streets of Tunis.
The Season of Men is a 2000 French-Tunisian drama film directed by Moufida Tlatli. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. The title of the film, The Season of Men, refers to the one month out of the year that the women's husbands come to the Island of Djerba.
Sarraounia is a 1986 historical drama film written and directed by Med Hondo. It is based on a novel of the same name by Nigerien author Abdoulaye Mamani, who co-wrote the screenplay. The novel and film concern the real-life Battle of Lougou between Azna queen Sarraounia and the advancing French Colonial Forces of the Voulet-Chanoine Mission in 1899. Sarraounia was one of the few African tribal leaders that resisted the advances of French expansionists Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine. The film won the first prize at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) and was critically well received.
Muna Moto is a 1975 Cameroonian drama film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa.
Nejib Belkadhi is a Tunisian actor and director.
Selma Hédia Mabrouk is a secular Tunisian politician who served on the 2011 Tunisian Constituent Assembly as a representative of Ettakatol party for the Ben Arous district. She made international headlines when she revealed that the initial draft of the constitution was attempting to define women as a "complement with the man in the family, and an associate to the man in the development of the country." The revelation was shocking to Tunisian society, where women had achieved rights unknown in the rest of the Arab world, and caused immediate outrage. Mabrouk's social media posts were instrumental in having those passages struck from the final constitution.
Leyla Bouzid, is a Tunisian screenwriter and film director.
Anissa Daoud is a Franco-Tunisian actress, author and producer. Living between Paris and Tunis, she is part of the art collective Artists Producers Associates (APA).
Taïeb Louhichi was a Tunisian film director, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His best known works include his debut feature film, Shadow of the Earth (1982), Layla, My Reason (1989), and La Danse du vent (2004).
Selma Baccar or Salma Baccar is a Tunisian filmmaker, producer and politician. She is considered the first woman to make a featured length film in Tunis. Baccar is known for creating manifestos through her films, centered around women's rights in Tunisia.
Mohamed Ben Attia, born January 5, 1976, in Tunis, is a Tunisian director and screenwriter.
Basma Khalfaoui, is a Tunisian lawyer, political activist and long-time advocate for the women’s movement who rose to national prominence following the assassination of her husband Chokri Belaid in 2013.
Arab Blues is a 2019 French-Tunisian comedy film directed by Manele Labidi Labbé in her feature debut. It was screened in the Venice Days section at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and then in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is about a Tunisian psychoanalyst Selma who, after having been educated in Paris, moves back to Tunisia and opens a psychoanalytic practice there.
Red Satin also known as Satin Rouge is a 2002 Tunisian Arabic-language women oriented drama film written and directed by Raja Amari on her feature film directorial debut. The film stars Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass and Hend El Fahem in the lead roles. It reveals the story of a widow woman who radically transforms from a housewife to a seductive caberet dancer. The film had its theatrical release on 24 April 2002 and opened to mixed reviews. The film received several awards and nominations at International Film Festivals.
Rim El Benna, is a Tunisian actress.
Selma Bargach is a Moroccan filmmaker.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Art research institutes | |
| Other | |
