Moroccan Film Days in Berlin likely to provoke sentiments of the Arab Spring

Provocative. Timely. Diverse. The upcoming Moroccan Film Days in Berlin will have it all: Films dealing with taboos, testing the very limits of freedom of expression in a provocation of the censors’ eye. Films which employ a great diversity of aesthetic devices. And then the ones which offer new perspectives of a country in transition with all its contradictions.

A film being made in Marrakech, Photo: (cc) flickr user CokeeOrg Dongyi Liu

Even before the events of the Arab Spring, Morocco has been undergoing its own kind of transition. For over 20 years the North African country has been in a process of reform to increase the socio-economic and political participation of all those in society, with some success and plenty of setbacks.

The Moroccan Film Days will present a wide variety of works chronicling these changes as they've happened over the last ten years. The event hosted by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) will take place September 1-4 at the KinoKino
A “Kino” is a movie theater. In most large cities, there are movie theaters that play original tone movies as well as films in German. Discounts are often given to students or on weekday evenings known as Billig Abend or cheap evening. Arsenal in Berlin.

Nine Moroccan feature films and documentaries from the years 2001-2010 will be shown, most of which will premiere for a German audience for the very first time. They’re a diverse body of work covering a wide range of themes from political prisoners to the rights of women and the dissolution of patriarchal structures, as well as migration, corruption and the Berber culture.

The diversity and vitality of Moroccan cinema is no accident. In contrast to the other Maghreb countries, the government has undertaken huge efforts to build up the film industry through various financial supports. Among them are the realignment of the Centre Cinématographique Marocain which is behind the Moroccan Film Festival and National Film School in Marrakech. The national film production is now the second largest in the Arab World, just behind the cinematic powerhouse of Egypt. Additional, the Cinémathèque opened in Tanger in 2006.

A program listing for the Moroccan Film Days can be found here…