Les co-productions algériennes avec l'Europe : standardisation ou résistance ?

Abstract

After more than twenty years of silence, Algerian cinema has resurfaced on the international scene for ten years, through co-productions with foreign countries and especially Europe. The use of foreign funding and the recognition of these films by the legitimating institutions of the North, that are reading committees and prestigious international festivals, raise the question of the subjugation of these filmmakers to European cultural hegemony. However, if some Algerian filmmakers and producers appeal to foreign funds, it is above all to free themselves from the supervision of the State and from censorship in their own country. These filmmakers are far from being in a position of subalterns unilaterally subject to stereotypical representations and the European public’s supposed expectations. On the contrary, they offer in their films plural images of the Algerian society, anchored in the present time and which contrast with the official discourse carried by epic films of national glorification turned towards the past. These co-productions that go beyond the Algerian national framework are more a result of resistance strategies by independent filmmakers than a result of a post-alienation to the values of the former metropole.