The Pan-african Festival in Algiers

Jan 1, 1969

1h 50m

★ 6.0

Overview

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

Genres

Documentary

Music

Production Companies

Office National pour le Commerce et l'Industrie Cinématographique (ONCIC)

The Pan-african Festival in Algiers Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self

Nina Simone

Self

Archie Shepp

Self

Miriam Makeba

Self

Marion Williams

Self

Amílcar Cabral

Self

René Depestre

Self

Armando Guebuza

Self

Mazisi Kunene

Self

Johnny Makatini

Self

Daniel Maragnès

Self

Oscar Monteiro

Self

Stephen N'Komo

Alone in a small white house on the edge of national road 1, the Trans-Saharan road, which connects Algiers to Tamanrasset crossing the immensity of the desert, Malika, 74, one day opened her door to the director Hassen Ferhani, who came there to scout with his friend Chawki Amari, journalist at El Watan and author of the story Nationale 1 which relates his journey on this north-south axis of more than 2000 km. The Malika of Amari's novel, which Ferhani admits to having first perceived as a "literary fantasy", suddenly takes on an unsuspected human depth in this environment naturally hostile to man. She lends herself to the film project as she welcomes her clients, with an economy of gestures and words, an impression reinforced by the mystery that surrounds her and the rare elements of her biography which suggest that she is not from the region, that she left the fertile north of Algeria to settle in the desert where she lives with a dog and a cat.

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