El Hedi ben Salem

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El Hedi ben Salem ( Arabic الهادي بن سالم, DMG al-Hādī b. Sālim ; * February 5, 1935 as El Hedi ben Salem m'Barek Mohammed Mustafa in Tunisia ; † September 13, 1977 in Nîmes , France ) was a Tunisian - Moroccan actor who was best known for his participation in films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder . Because of his Moroccan father, he is often passed off as a Moroccan.

Life

Salem's Moroccan father had settled in Redeyef, Tunisia. Salem was born there, grew up wealthy by local standards and received a good education. When he was around 15 years old, he married a 13-year-old Algerian. At the age of 18 he emigrated to France alone , where he worked as a factory worker in Paris for some time. Occasionally he returned to visit families in Tunisia and Algeria , where his wife had three sons and a daughter.

Relationship with Fassbinder

Salem was best known as a temporary partner of Rainer Werner Fassbinder , under whose direction he appeared in several feature films . In addition, he was sometimes in the prop and the manager operates. Since Salem spoke little German, all of his dialogues were later dubbed by the actor Wolfgang Hess .

Salem's relationship with Fassbinder began in 1971 after they allegedly met in a Paris gay sauna and Salem had moved to Fassbinder in West Germany . Fassbinder then described Salem as a cultural wonder . Salem's best-known film role was that of the Arab immigrant Ali, who in Fassbinder's melodrama Angst essen Seele enters into a liaison with a much older German cleaning lady played by Brigitte Mira .

Presumably with the intention of adoption, Fassbinder and Salem brought their two sons Abd El-Kader and Hamdan to Germany . The younger lived there only six months and then returned to Algeria. The elder Abd El-Kader remained in uncertain circumstances for several years with different people, including Hans Hirschmüller and Kurt Raab .

Salem and Fassbinder's relationship ended in 1973.

Return to France

After El Hedi ben Salem was allegedly involved in a knife fight in Berlin in the winter of 1974 , he fled to France with the help of Fassbinder . There, in Nîmes , he robbed a jewelry store with his nephew, was arrested and sentenced to prison. In 1977, he committed suicide in prison suicide .

Fassbinder, who probably only found out about the death of his former friend in 1982, dedicated his last film Querelle to his friendship with Salem in 1982 .

Filmography

Film about El Hedi ben Salem

In 2011 the German-Egyptian film historian and director Viola Shafik shot the documentary Jannat 'Ali ( Ali im Paradies / My Name is not Ali ), in which contemporary witnesses from Germany and family members from Algeria, Tunisia and France gave their views of Salem, the stay of children in Germany and the relationship with Fassbinder . Some facts are presented differently than in the most common Fassbinder biographies, especially in Die Sehnsucht des Rainer Werner Fassbinder by Kurt Raab and Karsten Peters, and others. a. it is doubted that he committed suicide in prison in France in 1977.

In the film Enfant Terrible , Salem is played by the actor Erdal Yıldız . The film is expected to hit theaters on October 1, 2020.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Documentary Jannat 'Ali ( Ali im Paradies / My Name is not Ali ) about El Hedi ben Salem, Viola Shafik , Egypt / Germany, 2011
  2. ^ Film review by Rudolf Waldemar Brem, Arab Film Festival, Friends of the Arab Kinemathek, Berlin eV, November 19, 2011
  3. ^ The longing of Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Kurt Raab and Karsten Peters, Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich, 1983, ISBN 3-570-03117-9
personal data
SURNAME El Hedi ben Salem
ALTERNATIVE NAMES El-Hedi ben Salem
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Tunisian actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1935
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1977
Place of death Nîmes , France