Cinema
The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua
La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua
Assia Djebar · 1977
Synopsis
Fifteen years after the end of the war, Lila, a thirty-year-old architect, returns to her native Chenoua mountains with her daughter and her husband, who has lost the use of his legs after an accident. Haunted by memories of the war of independence that marked her childhood, she goes to meet the women of the region, who tell her fragments of their lives. Between their words, the landscapes and the gestures of daily life, she measures what separates her existence from theirs, and what the elders pass on of resistance.
Context
Shot in the spring of 1976 for Algerian television, the film is built, according to its director, on recorded conversations of peasant women, which she then sought to put into images. Its structure takes up in five movements that of the nouba, a suite of Arab-Andalusian music. It is dedicated to Béla Bartók, who came to study Algerian folk music in 1913, and to Zoulikha, who organised the resistance in Cherchell and disappeared after her arrest. Poorly received in Algeria, where the press mocked its images judged feminist, it was chosen by Carlo Lizzani for the Venice competition.
Who it is for
Nearly two hours, in Arabic and French, subtitled, between documentary and fiction. It helps to know that the narrative advances by voices and motifs rather than by plot.
Prizes and reception
International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1979, the only prize awarded that year by journalists; regarded as a classic of women's cinema.