Amazigh cinema and the audience... from creating the spectator to shaping the recipient
Amazigh film began to impose itself little by little on the Moroccan creative and critical scene, and in view of this importance, the publications of the Isouraf Association for the Seventh Arts in Agadir recently published a book entitled “Amazigh Cinema and the Audience... from the Industry of Spectation to the Shaping of the Recipient.” It is the result of the work of a study day organized by the association, and includes various articles by a number of researchers and critics interested in Amazigh cinema, namely: Ibrahim Hasnaoui, Mohamed Zeroual, Hussein Manzoul, Ali Oublal, Masoud Boukerne, and Djamel Abrnous. We will review some ideas from these articles.
Cinema and the Audience Theoretical Notes
Under this title comes the research of critic Ibrahim Al-Hasnawi, pointing out that the consumption and exploitation of film inside cinema halls is the commercial organization of these halls, and that the primary goal of the economic process of cinema is to make the film a commodity offered for sale and consumption. Talking about the cinematic audience requires detailing its various components linked to sociological elements such as age, profession, educational level, and place of residence. He believes that cinema is an art, an industry, and a commodity reserved for trade and commerce. The various categories of the audience are what highlight the basic aspect of the reception process in cinema, which is characterized today by the emergence of a type of audience that downloads films from websites for free, where it is difficult to identify the films they are watching, and it is difficult to identify the elements controlling their choice. He concludes his research by saying: At a time when we are witnessing today the continuous disappearance of cinema halls, the decline of cinema club sites, the absence of cinema in academic curricula, and the flow of images broadcast by television and the Internet, can we talk about the existence of a crisis between Moroccan cinema and its audience? Which one of them is fighting to survive? How can the Moroccan audience be attracted to cinema halls? How do we make Moroccan cinema an economic, societal, cultural and educational project?
Searching for a modern formula
As for Mohamed Zeroual, in his article entitled “The Reception of Amazigh Film and Linguistic Diversity in Morocco,” he points out that talking about Amazigh film and Amazigh cinema has become a widely discussed topic in cinematic forums in the Maghreb countries, especially Morocco and Algeria, and has even become the subject of seminars and days. Scholarships for French universities, for example. He therefore believes that raising the status of the Amazigh film and its relationship with the audience, or the forms of its reception, is one of these prominent questions that is important to address, especially since the film, as a medium and a cultural, artistic and commercial product, cannot achieve its goals without an audience. Since its appearance at the end of the 19th century, cinema has been linked to the audience. Even in its early days, when films were no more than one minute long, the screening venues were crowded with audiences, who were on a pilgrimage to discover what the directors were depicting. All of this confirms the connection between cinema and the audience. Without it, it is impossible to talk about something called cinema. The latter, thanks to its technical capabilities and reliance on images, was given the opportunity to embrace wide audiences, even if they were not educated. Even though the Amazigh film was only three decades old, it was met with astonishment. Popular, and spread rapidly inside Morocco, including major cities such as Casablanca and Marrakesh, and abroad, especially in France, which since before independence has embraced an important community of Amazighs coming from southern Morocco, but what is notable is that the Amazigh film has remained far from the interests of film critics in Morocco. Nearly a decade and a half, unless we exclude a few critical writing initiatives that referred to this film genre, starting with the late critic Ibrahim Ait Hou. In this context, he wonders about the relationship of linguistic diversity to the status that the Amazigh film had in the field of critical writing in Morocco. He directed the directors and screenwriters to pay attention to new topics in the Amazigh film in order to work on themes that go beyond topics of a humanitarian, modern and societal nature, with which any viewer in any place can interact, while being keen to invest in the Amazigh heritage in its aesthetic, literary, linguistic, historical, philosophical and value dimensions, without Falling into repetition, superficial folkloric dimension, and simplification.
Media paradoxes
As for Al-Hussein Manzoul, in his article “The Amazigh Film and the Paradoxes of the Media,” he believes that the essence and soul of the film lies in its being the art of presentation, and this characteristic is what makes its ultimate goal be spectatorship, through which all the goals sought from it are achieved. The real spectacle resulting from well-constructed and beautifully presented films is what generates that desire to watch and consume the film product, and what makes us believe that the study of media in talking about the Amazigh film in its relationship with the audience, responds to the condition of necessity. It is its influence on the dynamism of the film industry in general, as the medium is the only way for the film to reach the viewer. Amazigh cinema in particular, and Moroccan cinema in general, is a cinema that has its own audience, and in no case can we say otherwise. However, in light of the contradiction experienced by the Moroccan cinematic climate, with the increase in the number of films produced annually from Arab and Amazigh films, in contrast to the permanent confinement of cinema halls, the The viewer does not consume the film product in the correct way. Manzoul points out that the “Tamazight” channel, which is responsible for promoting Amazigh civilization, culture and art, is completely ignoring its goals, reducing the Amazigh language to its linguistic aspect only (we are talking here only about films). He believes that television channels, cinema halls, or CDs are not at the end of the day. Ultimately, they are merely media that can be used for the benefit of Amazigh film creativity. This creativity can also be a victim of mismanagement of these media, either consciously or not. It remains at the core of our interest, as researchers in this field, to point out the lapses of those in charge of these media, in order to correct their course in the service of national cultural production, especially film creativity.
Cinematic taste
Researcher Ali Oubilal addresses the topic entitled “The Amazigh Film between the Anxiety of Filmmakers and the Audience’s Reluctance,” explaining that the subject of film studies in its relationship with the audience is one of the oldest topics that it has dealt with, and the pens of Western film critics in general, other than the Third World countries, have elaborated on it, and what is striking is when we follow the Amazigh film. In Souss’s view, it is the absence of the element of childhood as an active viewer and actor and not as a consumable material within the film’s scenes, as we note that Amazigh filmography explicitly absents childhood in its filmic discourse, and in fact the stake of every society and its future is childhood. This is why I think it is necessary for the Amazigh creator to work on refining and educating the artistic and cinematic taste among children, as they are an essential tributary that can carry their culture and identity and travel with it far, through investing in film in particular, and investing in other forms of media. Finally, the researcher believes that stimulating the economic cycle of cinema is not limited to the quality of the audience and urging them to go to the theaters, unless there is a cinematic policy that makes cinema a societal, cultural, artistic and educational project.
Modest attempts
Amazigh cinema and the audience...what is the relationship? It was a study in which Mohamed Boukarne participated, who believes that if Amazigh cinema, in its final stages, is directed directly to a limited group of audiences, who are speakers of its language, this means that we have relieved it of embarrassment towards the rest of the audiences, who will deal with the image as a source of multiple cultural dialogues, and with non-native speakers. Amazigh language, so that the spaces in which the seventh Amazigh art moves remain narrow in scope, and the spaces it has prepared for its audience cost the current situation nothing more than modest filmic attempts that play the role of preserving survival, or extending the stage of extinction. The Amazigh productions that our television screens present to their viewers, without taking any consideration of the lowest elements of quality, have made them fall outside the flock, and reduced the size of the audience that constitutes the “all” rule in which Amazigh and non-Amazigh people engage, to a “partial” audience that includes Amazigh speakers, which is the current stage. In which the remaining part was divided into different slices.
Find support
Finally, researcher Jamal Abernous adds in his article “The Vision and the Bet in the Rural Amazigh Film” that the rural Amazigh film did not accumulate enough works that would allow extrapolating its characteristics, conflicts, and themes, nor to issue judgments regarding its artistic and aesthetic values, and therefore it is worthwhile for those seeking this endeavor to criticize it. The current reading deals with specific experiences, and avoids generalizing judgments. It is certain that the constraints and directives of institutional support play a major role in shaping the field of creative and productive language, and that the requirements for filming and the selection of actors have an impact on the choice of the story, the form of scene fragmentation, and the language of dialogue. Therefore, it is better not to be drawn into making comparisons with general Moroccan dramatic production, due to the disparity in experience and accumulation, as well. The support shares allocated to the Amazigh film must be increased in order to recover some of the lag that resulted from decades of exclusion and marginalization.
Lahsan Malwani
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