Nora, who is connected to ACAA, arrived the day before yesterday from Paris. Another new friend that I feel like I have known forever. Last night we went to the closing night of the Bejaia film festival. The first short film was an original creation by young Bejaia folk who created sort of a SNL style journal recap of the festival. It was hysterical and Nora and I both looked at each other and said: “there is hope for this country.” Then there was a long film from the 1980s that was as Nora says “a psychiatric nightmare.” The film was set in a completely Berber setting but the actors performed in classical Arabic. And every 10 minutes a woman in the film would have a frenetic fingernail-on-the-wall-hair-tearing-out-of-control-screaming crisis.
My experience in Algeria these past 5 years has always been one of enormous emotional highs and lows. I’ll be laughing hysterically for days, and then sobbing for days, and then totally confused for a few more days. Somehow being apart of this culture and society you have to keep an outside eye, a third objective eye, in order to stay afloat. It’s the blessing and curse of being of multiple cultures, languages and places. We are never satisfied.
Yesterday I wandered the old part of Bejaia near where the theatre is situated. Just gorgeous! The view from the Place Guidon is one of the reasons why I wanted the KFP to take place in Bejaia!
Tomorrow I am meeting with the mayor of Bejaia with Nora to see if the KFP couldn’t be performed in October during a cultural exchange between the city of Creteil (a Paris suburb) and Bejaia. Exciting!
Among other absurdities: we have to arrange our meeting with university students around the European Cup! We cannot schedule anything during a match!
My experience in Algeria these past 5 years has always been one of enormous emotional highs and lows. I’ll be laughing hysterically for days, and then sobbing for days, and then totally confused for a few more days. Somehow being apart of this culture and society you have to keep an outside eye, a third objective eye, in order to stay afloat. It’s the blessing and curse of being of multiple cultures, languages and places. We are never satisfied.
Yesterday I wandered the old part of Bejaia near where the theatre is situated. Just gorgeous! The view from the Place Guidon is one of the reasons why I wanted the KFP to take place in Bejaia!
Tomorrow I am meeting with the mayor of Bejaia with Nora to see if the KFP couldn’t be performed in October during a cultural exchange between the city of Creteil (a Paris suburb) and Bejaia. Exciting!
Among other absurdities: we have to arrange our meeting with university students around the European Cup! We cannot schedule anything during a match!
Nora told me that according to certain anthropologists and ethnologists the fact that Tamazight (the Berber language) still exists is actually a phenomenon—the language and traditions in fact are survivors. Even the TRB’s presentation in the National Theatre Festival was in Arabic, all of discussions and debates at the Cultural House during the film festival in Bejaia were in French. I am not going to write about any of the politics behind this history because I really feel that as an outsider (from the inside) my involvement is completely personal and artistic. But all the same, it’s food for thought, and important to be aware of the climate, conditions, roots and goals that surround me. Creating a public performance cannot be done naively and innocently. A statement is made just in the very act of creation.
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