Assia Djebar
La nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua)
Edition 2021
115'
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1977
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Dialogue:
Arabic
Director:
Assia Djebar
La Nouba borrows the structure of the nouba, a five-part traditional Andalusian music form, to tell the story of a woman who returns to the town of her childhood fifteen years after
the violent War of Independence.
La Nouba borrows the structure of the nouba, a five-part traditional Andalusian music form, to tell the story of a woman
who returns to the town of her childhood fifteen years after
the violent War of Independence. Reading the history of her
country as written in the stories of women’s lives, La Nouba
des Femmes du Mont Chenoua is an engrossing portrait of
speech and silence, memory and creation, and a tradition
where the past and present coexist.
Print courtesy of the Centre Algérien de la Cinématographie.
“This film, in the form of a nouba, is dedicated, posthumously,
to Hungarian musician Béla Bartók, who had come to a nearly mute Algeria to study its folk music in 1913; and to Yaminai Oudai, known as Zoulikha, who organised a resistance network in the city of Cherchell and its mountains in 1955 and 1956. She was arrested in the mountains when she was in her forties. Her name was subsequently added to the list of the missing. Lila — the protagonist in this film — could be Zoulikha’s daughter. The six other talking women of Chenoua recount fragments of their lives. The Nouba of the Women is their moment. But the Nouba is also the Nouba of the Andalusian music in its particular rhythmic movements. “
to Hungarian musician Béla Bartók, who had come to a nearly mute Algeria to study its folk music in 1913; and to Yaminai Oudai, known as Zoulikha, who organised a resistance network in the city of Cherchell and its mountains in 1955 and 1956. She was arrested in the mountains when she was in her forties. Her name was subsequently added to the list of the missing. Lila — the protagonist in this film — could be Zoulikha’s daughter. The six other talking women of Chenoua recount fragments of their lives. The Nouba of the Women is their moment. But the Nouba is also the Nouba of the Andalusian music in its particular rhythmic movements. “
Image gallery
Credits
Director
Assia Djebar
More information
Dialogue
Arabic
Countries of production
Algeria
Year
1977
