Ahmed Rachedi

L'Aile Noire" is a gripping Algerian drama set during the Algerian War of Independence. Directed by Ahmed Rachedi, the film delves into the lives of Algerian resistance fighters as they struggle against French colonial forces in their quest for freedom. The story portrays the bravery, sacrifices, and inner conflicts of those involved in the fight for Algeria's independence. Through the experiences of its characters, "L'Aile Noire" sheds light on the human side of a pivotal historical event, offering a powerful narrative that captures the essence of patriotism and resistance.

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Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.

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Ali, a young Algerian who carried out an attack in Algiers, hastily leaves the city to join the resistance. But he is disappointed to find that the National Liberation Army consists of only a few fighters scattered throughout the mountains. However, he is impressed by the authority of the leader, Si Tayeb, who gives him a weapon. Meanwhile, a young French sergeant, Gachon, arrives in Algeria with his contingent of conscripts. In civilian life, he is a schoolteacher, and he becomes the colonel's secretary. One night, the FLN group invades a village, the dechra of Beni Allel: waking the inhabitants, the leader gives them a propaganda speech to incite them to fight the French, then gives them weapons; He claims that all the other villages have rallied to their cause, which is false. When he finds himself in difficulty at one point, he is rescued by Ali, who saves the day with his authority and skill.

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The story of the post-independence nationalization of the mill of Monsieur Fabre, an old man attached to the land of Algeria where he was born. In this small town in eastern Algeria, there was nothing else to nationalize and they were actively preparing for the arrival of high dignitaries who would elevate the mill to the rank of an industrial flour mill even though it was threatened with ruin. The comedy gets worse when the football player from the local team withdraws for love, the officials' visit is canceled and Mr. Fabre returns.

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In the 1980s, barely 18 years after Algeria's independence, Algerian immigration to France massively fueled the construction industry, responding to a demand for hard, undervalued labor. Behind the idea of ​​"selective immigration," these men were recruited primarily for their bras and their knock-kneed hands, shaped by construction sites. Invisible yet essential, they built roads, buildings, and infrastructure, often at the cost of precarious conditions. Ali, an Algerian crane operator in France, philosophically accepts the harassment faced by immigrants like himself on construction sites and in daily life. He hopes to escape his situation with the money he wins in the lottery, and from the top of his crane, he allows himself to dream, observing the world through binoculars. One day, the jackpot falls...

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Documentary tribute to the Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez produced in 1977 consisting of archive images of the singer during his visit to Paris in September 1974, joined by fictional scenes which take the form of a journalistic investigation. A little-known film in the filmography of Ahmed Rachedi who during this Parisian period will direct another feature film that we would very much like to see again: "A Finger in the Gear" (1973), on a screenplay by Rachid Boudjedra. The credits and some images of "La chanson de l'Adieu", released in France in December 1981 in the famous Luxor hall in Paris where more than 5,000 spectators came to see it.

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The film mixes fiction, filmed documents and interviews which recounts the arrival in Paris of an Algerian immigrant lost in the metro. On December 27, 1968, France and Algeria signed an agreement which admitted each year 35,000 Algerian workers to French territory in the France of the Trente Glorieuses where the annual growth rate reached 5% and where factories lacked workers. Candidates obtain a residence permit valid for 5 years for themselves and their families. Paris is committed to improving professional training and housing conditions for immigrants, too often confined to the most thankless jobs and often housed in slums. A testimony on the living conditions of emigrant workers "economic cannon fodder" of neocolonialism which simultaneously develops its alter ego, institutionalized racism, as a tool of social stagnation and division of the proletarian class.

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Collectively made Algerian film.

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In 1950, in Algeria, in a village in Kabylia, Algerian resistance fighters resisted the French occupation army. Bachir returns to the village to escape the clashes ravaging Algiers. In Thala, he has two brothers, Ali and Belaïd. The first is engaged with the ALN (The National Liberation Army) and fights against the colonizer. His second brother, Belaïd, the eldest, is convinced of a French Algeria. His family torn apart, Bachir decides to join the war and takes sides against the repression of the French army. The French army is trying in vain to turn the population against the insurgents by using disinformation. The more time passes, the more the inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, oppressed, rally to the cause of the FLN, their houses and their fields will be burned... Adaptation to the cinema of the eponymous novel Opium and the Stick, published in 1965, by Mouloud Mammeri, the film was dubbed into Tamazight (Berber), a first for Algerian cinema.

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This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

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Collectively directed by the members of the Centre audiovisuel d'Alger at Ben Aknoun, the film traces, in two parts, Algeria's recent history, from colonial repression to the birth of the National Liberation Army, and the country's postwar reconstruction, framed in sympathy with the socialist project of Ahmed Ben Bella's government. Released in 1964, the film was banned and sealed after Houari Boumediene's June 1965 coup, precisely because of its favorable treatment of Ben Bella.

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