Halfaouine - time of dreams
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Halfaouine - time of dreams |
| Original title | Asfour steel |
| Country of production |
Tunisia , France |
| original language | Arabic |
| Publishing year | 1990 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Férid Boughedir |
| script |
Férid Boughedir , Nouri Bouzid , Taoufik Jebali , Maryse León García |
| production |
Ahmed Bahaeddine Attia , Sylvain Bursztejn , Hassen Daldoul , Eliane Stutterheim |
| music | Anouar Brahem |
| camera | Georges Barsky |
| cut |
Marie-Christine Rougerie , Moufida Tlatli |
| occupation | |
| |
Halfaouine - Time of Dreams (Original Title: Asfour Stah , Alternative Title: Halfaouine - The Child of the Roofs ) is a 1990 Franco-Tunisian film directed by Férid Boughedir . The comedy about Noura, a 12-year-old boy on the way from childhood to youth in Maghreb society, was awarded the Tanit d'Or at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia in 1990 .
action
The film is set in Tunis in the 1970s. Noura lives with his family in Halfaouine, a district in the north of the Medina (old town). The 12-year-old accompanied his mother to the district's bathhouse, the hammam, from an early age . Actually too old for this at his age, but since he looks younger, his mother continues to take him there and persuades the guard to let him in. Protected in the world of women, who freely and without taboos in the steam bath and the protection of their inner courtyards, openly discuss all matters they have with their husbands, Noura witnessed all these stories as a child. When he approaches puberty, his sexual curiosity awakens and he begins to look at the women present with different eyes. Later in the neighborhood, he tells his two older friends Moncef and Mounir about his observations in the hammam and thus brings them closer to a piece of the magic of nudity from the women's bathhouse. Both instruct Noura to provide them with further details. This tells them about the shape of the female body and the exact processes in the bathhouse and is accepted by the older boys.
On the day of his brother's circumcision, something that Noura repels, he is banished from the realm of bathing women. He follows a female bather, a voluptuous young woman, secretly into a corner of the bathhouse, driven by the idea of seeing the female gender and getting hold of a washing glove as a trophy. The guardian of the bathhouse catches him and so he is thrown out and humiliated forever. From now on, the women's bath house is taboo for him and in future he will have to go to the men's bath house with his father. It is time for Noura to enter the world of men, a world in which Noura first has to find their way, but which also attracts him and triggers great fears of the transition into adult life. His older friend, the shoemaker Salih, accompanies him for a while on this journey.
One day, Noura's family hires a new housekeeper, which Sheikh Mokhtar brings them and who is known as an orphan who lost her home and family in the fire at her parents' house. With Laïla, 15 years old, the magic of the days in the steam bath is suddenly back - but different: Noura no longer looks at Laïla with the child's eyes. The two timidly get closer until one day they are caught and Noura's mother Laïla throws out of the house. When they leave, the whole family gathers on the terrace. The father pays the sheikh to compensate him. Laïla smiles discreetly at Noura one last time. Noura is left alone with her father on the terrace, still smiling. When the father tries to chastise Noura, he evades, drops the father and flees onto the terrace. From there he looks at his father and accentuates it with mocking noises.
backgrounds
Characters
Noura is played by a nephew of Boughedir. His play takes place mainly through facial expressions. The viewer reads in his face. Noura is actually a female given name, in the film the boy is only mentioned once by his full name Noureddine . The shape of Noura still gives him the touch of a little boy, a bit feminine, ambivalent. He is still regarded as a child in the women's hammam, a little woman herself. Through his reports to his friends Moncef and Mounir about what is going on in the hammam, he gains a special status, a kind of smuggler who serves the curiosity of others. He is an assistant in the men's hair salon. Through Laïla, Noura leaves his childhood behind.
Azzouz , Noura's father, runs a fabric shop. He is the head of the family and the authority in the house, strict with Noura. He loves women, ready to cheat the mother with her cousin in the house or with a customer. He does not have the instinct to teach the boy more finely how to become a man. The father expects Noura no longer to hang on the tips of the women's skirts.
Mother Jamila is a typical Maghreb woman of the 70s. She watches over the staff and the preparation of meals and takes care of the children. For her, Noura is still a small child, she is still very close to him physically through the care she takes on him in the hammam. It is only through her work with the guardian of the hammam that Noura is still allowed to enter this realm. She defends Noura from her father when he tries to abuse him.
Noura's aunt Latifa is like a second mother to the boy. She is a mother's cousin, young and sexy. She has left her husband (one can assume that he was too traditional for Latifa) and embodies the liberated woman in the Maghreb with her modern clothes, preferably red lace underwear, make-up and lipstick . Father Azzouz does n't want this woman in the house. However, mother Jamila convinces him of Latifa's embroidery skills, so she can stay. Latifa chases her "shot" every day, a paraphrase of her for her lover.
The shoemaker Salih becomes a friend and a kind of second father for Noura, more spiritual, very different from Noura's strict biological father. He can talk to him about how to seduce women. Salih is not religious, he refuses to marry, does not even go to the mosque, drinks alcohol and is still well accepted in the neighborhood. Alcohol is forbidden for a Muslim. Salih is an alcoholic, but he is careful to hide his drink in medicine bottles from others. Morality is preserved visually and literally. Although small in stature, he is the seducer of the neighborhood, anarchist-inspired but not macho. He is a poet, singer and writes plays that nobody wants to play. His last piece is entitled Laughing in the Dark . He's a kind of local clown who nonetheless doesn't hesitate to use his humor on those who annoy him. Hidden in the role of the fool, he is the only one who speaks the truth about his poems and plays, thus taking up hypocrisy and intolerance. He makes women laugh with his humor. That enables him to seduce her. He is in love with Latifa. The blasphemy accused Salih was arrested one day.
Noura's friends Moncef and Mounir are a little older than he is. Interested in women, they constantly hunt on the street to meet them. You use the boy to get a detailed description of the women's bodies in the bathhouse.
Salouha and Laïla help with the household of Noura's family. Salouha is older than Laïla, close to madness, unhappy. She is at the mercy of the Sheikh and his machinations. Nobody knows where they come from, both girls are under the care of Sheikh Mokhtar, they are connected by a strange bug tattoo. It is Laïla who makes Noura discover his first love, which will help her transition into puberty. She wears a tight corset, which looks inviting and as a substitute for the nudity after the expulsion from the hammam on Noura.
Sheikh Mokhtar , responsible for Noura's religious instruction, is constantly chasing after the teenagers on the street to prevent them from flirting with the girls in the neighborhood. His role is special, he is a mixture of religious authority and charlatan. He is portrayed a bit ridiculous in the film, always present when it comes to guarding morals. Like when Noura is punished for his love affair with Laïla. He also uses strange methods to cast out a demon on the maid Salouha.
The butcher and a clochard haunt Noura to his dreams: the butcher in connection with blood and cutting meat and the vulgar, dirty clochard as the henchman of Sheikh Mokhtar, including his charlatanry in the form of magic and exorcism.
The director himself slipped into the role of a customer in the district's hairdressing salon. Another customer is the Tunisian theater and film actor Raouf Ben Amor , known from the film Pirates by Roman Polański and The Messiah by Roberto Rossellini . Issa Harath plays the role of Ali. The young Fethi Haddaoui , seen in the role of Khemaïs, is an adversary of Salih. The female extras in the hammam are played by French women of Maghrebian descent.
Rod
Boughedir co-wrote his screenplay with Nouri Bouzid, director of the 2006 film Making Of, and actor and playwright Taoufik Jebali. Maryse León García, known as the screenwriter of La vie est belle, directed by Benoît Lamy from 1987 , was also involved in the script. Moufida Tlatli was responsible for editing the film alongside Marie-Christine Rougerie, and Tlatli also works as a director and screenwriter. The Tunisian producer Ahmed Bahaeddine Attia is also known as the producer of 4 films by the director Nouri Bouzid. The best-known of them are Bezness and Safa'ih min dhahab (Les Sabots en or) with Hichem Rostom in the lead role. He was also the producer of Moufida Tlatli's Palace of Silence . Georges Barsky also directed the camera for films such as The End of the Night and Liberation from Marriage .
Halfaouine
The shooting took place in 1989 in the Halfaouine district of Tunis. Screenwriter and director Boughedir as well as composer Anouar Brahem grew up in this area. The houses are close together, typical inner courtyards are characteristic of the houses. This is where the life of women takes place, protected from the eyes of the outside world. The roof terraces can be reached from these courtyards and are used to dry the laundry or the spicy peppers and grain. You can also easily get from one house to another via the terraces. The children stay there, it is also rumored that one or the other love affair started there when you can catch a discreet glimpse of the beauty of your choice while doing household chores. Noura is also spying on the new maid Laïla on this path. The girl magically attracts him. If the father is out of the house, the women can be seen in the inner courtyard with goodies and gossip that knows no taboos; everything is discussed. Laughing, dancing, often embellished with paraphrases, yet each of the women present knows exactly what is meant. Another refuge that can be assigned to the world of women is the hammam. Portrayed by western literature and painting since the 18th century, the hammam is, on the one hand, this warm, steaming and lazy place that offers Noura the opportunity to stealthily draw his gaze on naked female bodies, but on the other hand, it is also symbolically a female lap from which Noura is encountered with the onset of puberty. As long as the hammam is accessible to Noura, it has something of the magic of forbidden fruits. He is passive in his actions there. He is cleansed by the women; he only observes what happens to small children. The women's bodies in the hammam have an appearance of freedom, there and in the domestic space, not in public.
The world in these neighborhoods makes a very clear distinction between men and women. Boys who are allowed to travel between the two worlds up to a certain age are excluded. Humor plays a very big role in getting around taboos. The world of men moves on the streets of Tunis. In the cafes, at the hairdresser, where you go to exchange all the news and also under the pretext of freshening up your haircuts or beards to make fun of politics, always on your guard, not in conflict with the government law enforcement officers to get. The boutiques, like those of Noura's father, are also men's worlds. In this world Noura has to learn to find his place. Men and women meet in the courtyard, the heart of the house or on the beach, a somewhat more anonymous place and further away. It was important to Boughedir to include the terraces in the film title. They are a kind of no man's land, as the street is reserved for men and the interior of the houses is the realm of women. Anything can happen on the terraces. They seem to have a double symbolism: that of communication and that of the flight up to freedom. In summary, the film is not an anti-religious work and does not seek to find answers to the country's politics or Islamic fundamentalism. But he deals with taboos, which cause hypocrisy and intolerance. Using the example of the inhabitants of the Halfaouine district, he shows what small transgressions take place in Arab society, over which the cloak of silence is often put. It shows the coexistence of generations and also that this coexistence is not disturbed if politically different positions exist.
intention
In an interview with Anne Andreu for the French weekly magazine L'Événement du jeudi in September 1990, Boughedir said that in the late 1970s there was an opinion among Tunisian filmmakers that Tunisian cinema needed to be more committed. For Boughedir, who was already working as a film critic, it was clear that if he himself were on the other side of the camera, he would tell all the other things that have not yet been told in Tunisian cinema. Boughedir went on to say that he vigorously refused to make a political film. With Halfaouine he wanted, according to his own statement, "to find my child's view of this Arab society in which everything is taboo." For the filming, Boughedir had to convince the female actresses to play naked, but that there was still no offense about it how Boughedir wanted to film them. The purity of the pictures also had to convince the Tunisian censors. In Cahiers du cinéma No. 433, page 61, June 1990 edition, it was mentioned that the director would want his film to "open doors". According to the article, Boughedir was of the opinion that Tunisian cinema would play a role in the future. He attested it to be "the freest cinema in the Arab world". When asked about his motivation for making the film, Boughedir referred in his answer to the clichés that are often attributed to Arab society in the popular neighborhoods. As an example, he cited the image of "veiled, submissive, beaten women and fanatical men" that he had never seen. His concern was to correct this picture by painting the neighborhood of the neighborhood in which he grew up through his film as it actually is.
In a compilation of the film, the online portal CinePrisme has also published excerpts from interviews Boughedir gave between September and October 1990, including Télérama , a French cultural and television magazine, and Le Monde , and were taken from the official press kit for the film . It also contains a statement by Boughedir about the Tunisian women in his country, which the director is fascinated by. According to the director, they have a kind of genius and would still manage to suffer less constraints than men. As an example, he cited a scene in the film in which the women are seen sitting together in the courtyard on the terrace of Noura's house, amusing themselves with their men and their peculiarities, Latifa mentioning her shot , everyone laughs a lot and exuberantly, until father Azzouz comes off the market. As a householder and husband, he tries to keep an eye on things and puts a basket of purchases next to the women. Everyone sits up straight and falls silent, the coffee being prepared is boiling over. The host goes. The camera captures the basket and the cucumbers, carrots and aubergines lying on top of it in large dimensions, and the women burst out laughing, pointing with their fingers at the size of the vegetables. With this scene, Boughedir wanted to show that women's laughter is the most powerful thing in the world.
In an interview with Jeune Afrique in April 2016, Boughedir said that he would only make a film if it seemed essential to him. That happens when he is tired of watching the spread of stereotypes that arise when talking about Arab, Muslim, and especially Tunisian society. In the development phase of Halfaouine , shortly after the Iranian revolution, they were only talking about the topics of chador and the imprisoned women. This picture had absolutely nothing to do with how he, Boughedir, experienced it. As a child, he grew up in a society in which "a kind of Mediterranean matriarchy reigned under the guise of submissiveness on the part of women ".
reception
The film is classified as a youth film. The pedagogical age recommendation according to the Lexicon of International Films is given as 14 years. In Tunisia the film was released without age limit, in Finland from 12 years, Sweden from 11 years, England from 15 years and no recommendation is given for the USA. To secure funding for the film, Boughedir co-produced in France. The Tunisian Ministry of Culture contributed with a grant, the French co-producer granted an advance on the expected income, but it was mainly the advance sales of the film on television stations in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany ( WDR Cologne ) and France that secured the état . The film premiered in 1990 not only in Tunisia but also in France, the USA and Canada. The film made its debut in the Netherlands in 1991, followed by Denmark, Sweden and Finland in 1992. With a remarkable sales record of 500,000 tickets in the first 6 months after its cinema premiere, the film set an unprecedented milestone at the Tunisian box office. In a country that only had 28 cinemas available at the time (another source speaks of up to 90 cinemas, so it is not entirely clear whether the 28 mentioned may mean the number of cinemas in which the film is in Tunisia actually played) the film overtook Titanic and Rambo ticket sales in Tunisia. Some of the people are said to have visited the shows 4 to 5 times, a cult film for Tunisia. In Paris the film was shown in 5 cinemas over a period of 14 weeks. In the first week, 10,581 moviegoers saw the film and a total of 83,275 people.
At the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, Boughedir managed to find a film distributor for Japan. The movie poster appeared in Tunisia - it is a little darker there, Noura can be seen in the foreground, her head bent down over a bowl, Laïla sits behind him and washes his head, in the background the open door of the hammam can be seen and gives a discreet look inside, the women are covered - unlike in France, where an extract of the interior of the hammam is shown directly. Here Noura, looking at an indefinite point, is pictured next to his mother, who appears to be enjoying the bath. Other bathers can be seen uncovered in the background. For the DVD cover, only Noura is shown looking through an opening in a wall. The film is considered the most watched Tunisian film worldwide and has so far been released under various titles:
- Halfaouine - L'Enfant des Terrasses (France)
- Halfaouine - Boy of the Terraces and Halfaouine - Child of the Terraces (worldwide English titles)
- Halfaouine - The Child of the Roofs (TV title)
- Halfaouine - bag sløret (Denmark)
- Vedic poika (Finland)
- Halfaouine - dziecko tarasów (Poland)
- Мальчик на крыше (Russian title)
- Halfaouine - Bakom slöjan (Sweden)
In 1992 a VHS version was released via K – Films (Paris) . The film was available as a DVD-Video from 2003. Almost 30 years after its first publication, the Blu-ray was released in summer 2019 together with Boughedir's second feature film A Summer in La Goulette . On this occasion, the Internet newspaper Mediapart devoted a consideration to the film under the title “End of a Tunisian Childhood” and praised the fact that in his “Initiation Chronicle” the director painted human diversity in great detail, and especially that of women when they were in their freedom live in the hammams and courtyards and speak openly and with humor about their relationships with men.
censorship
Despite the intimate scenes from the women's hammam or the very presently filmed scene of the circumcision of Noureddine's brother according to the Islamic rite (the scene was filmed without the final cut and, even if it repels Noura, treated like a secular religious custom that difficult to condemn.), the subjects of alcohol or blasphemy and one or the other portrayed violation of taboos in Muslim societies, Boughedir has succeeded in making a film that was neither censored nor cut in Tunisia. Just as the director wanted to make his film, it was approved.
“You would like HALFAOUINE to be shown everywhere, from Riyadh to Casablanca, from Beirut to Algiers. But here as there is the censorship, which will use the public display of wet, naked bodies in the bath as a pretext for their prohibition. But what you really don't want to have shown is the revelation of the hidden family traditions, which Boughédir takes on with tenderness, freshness, humor and longing. - Liberation "
In Tunisia, after the film appeared in Ennahda's L'Aube newspaper , Boughedir was relentlessly attacked by Islamists who said it was shameful to show what was going on in a hammam on screen. In TMDb's description of the film, it is stated that in most Arab countries the film has been withheld from the audience by the censors until today.
music
In 1990, Anouar Brahem wrote the soundtrack for the film, “which celebrates the neighborhood of his childhood with a certain melancholy grace.” The instrumental soundtrack was the inspiration for the Tunisian poet, translator, art historian and screenwriter Ali Louati for his famous chanson “Ritek ma naâref win” (fr: Je t'ai vue je ne sais où), interpreted by Lotfi Bouchnak.
Festival dates (selection)
Looking back, in an interview with Philippe Royer for La Croix in 1996, Boughedir was surprised by the success of his film and remembered that at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990 a Japanese man approached him and asked about the subject of the film, “That is my youth ”said. Boughedir also recalled that he had been surprised to have had such a resonance with these stories set in the streets of his childhood neighborhood.
- 1990: Cannes International Film Festival
- New York Film Festival - opening film
Awards (selection)
At the Carthage Film Festival (JCC) in 1990, the film won awards for Best Acting , Best Director and the Unesco Award in addition to the festival's main prize .
- 1990: Tanit d'Or - Carthage Film Festival
- 1990: Silver Hugo - Chicago International Film Festival
- 1990: Golden Palm - Valencia Festival of Mediterranean Cinema
- 1991: Audience Award - International Film Weekend in Würzburg
- Gold Medal - Giffoni International Film Festival
- Best Young Male Actor - Vevey International Comedy Film Festival
- Special Jury Prize - New York Film Festival
- Best Picture Award - Las Vegas Film Festival
- Grand Prix - Vues d'Afrique International Film Festival
- Best Arab Film of the Year - Cairo International Film Festival
- Golden Olive - Arte Mare Film Festival Bastia
Nominations (selection)
- 1991: Best first work - César
bibliography
- Cahiers du cinéma No. 433, June 1990
- Cahiers du Cinéma No. 435, September 1990
- Cinéma 90 No. 468, June 1990
- Jeune Cinéma No. 202, June 1990
- Positif No. 353-354, July 1990
- Positif No. 358, December 1990
- Premiere No. 163, October 1990
- Revue du Cinéma No. 462, July 1990
- L'Avant-Scenè Cinéma No. 483, June 1999
Reviews
Over the years, the film has repeatedly been picked up by the press and internet portals. It outweighs the positive reviews. The lexicon of international films deviates somewhat from this and wrote as a rating:
“A puberty story from Tunisia that tears open the ciphers of Islamic film, but vacillates all too indecisively between a social study and an initiation story. The film leaves largely untouched because it is unable to convey the boy's individual crisis. "
Classified as a youth film, it is also listed and rated as such on the pages of the database for youth films:
"A colorful, poetic and humorous film that lovingly stages the difficulties of growing up in the context of Arab stereotypes and fundamentalist taboos."
On July 30, 2000, the TV station Arte showed the film. The magazine Le Parisien stated in its consideration of the program announcement:
“With great finesse, the director Férid Boughedir describes in Halfaouine - Time of Dreams (...) the first emotions of this child who goes from childhood to puberty. (...) Between smiles and emotions, the director does not forget the other social problems that Tunisia faced back then. "
When the DVD version was released in 2003, some Internet portals reviewed the film again. The Guide-Rapide portal also published press excerpts in its presentation, including the rating by journalist Cécile Mury, written for Télérama :
“Ferid Boughedir not only shows the first sexual feelings of a lovable boy. It deals with the sufferings of a phallic and stable society, and the comedy set in the 1970s in a Tunisia ruled by an authoritarian regime is a skilful political satire. "
In June 2019, the author Cédric Lépine devoted himself to the film for Mediapart and once again drew attention to the police state of the time.
"That affectionate look doesn't forget to mention the police violence against union members who have been mobilized to defend their rights, violence against women and religious puritanism that is beginning to take hold."
He continued:
"So thirty years later the film has not lost its liveliness, both through its political, ethnographic, historical and intimate content, in which everyone can remember their first emotions in order to leave the innocence of childhood."
Web links
- Halfaouine - time of dreams in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Halfaouine, l'enfant des terrasses (fr). - Africiné , accessed September 9, 2019 and also Halfaouine - Time of Dreams. - Film.at , accessed September 9, 2019
- ↑ a b c d e f (as PDF) Férid Boughedir: Halfaouine - L'enfant des terrasses (fr). - CinePrisme , accessed September 12, 2019
- ↑ a b Author: Renaud de Rochebrune Cinéma - Férid Boughedir: 'Je tends un miroir aux Tunisiens' (fr). - Jeune Afrique , April 18, 2016, accessed September 12, 2019
- ^ Author: Robert Lang New Tunisian Cinema: Allegories of Resistance (en). - Google Books , pages 302-306, accessed September 12, 2019
- ↑ (as PDF) Author: Olivier Péretiér Le chef-d'oeuvre d'un cinéaste tunisien - L'oiseau des terrasses (fr). - L'Obs , accessed September 13, 2019
- ↑ a b Author: EL Rendez-vous à Halfaouine (fr). - In: Le Parisien , July 30, 2000, accessed September 13, 2019
- ↑ a b Asfour stah (1990) Ferid Boughedir. - Cinema Encyclopedie , accessed September 13, 2019
- ↑ a b Sortie dvd et blu-ray: Halfaouine, l'enfant des terrasses (fr). - Guide-Rapide , accessed September 15, 2019
- ↑ a b Halfaouine - Time of Dreams. - Lexicon of International Films , accessed September 13, 2019
- ↑ a b c Author: Cédric Lépine Fin d'une enfance tunisienne (fr). - In: Mediapart , June 19, 2019, accessed September 13, 2019
- ↑ Halfaouine - Time of Dreams. - TMDb , accessed September 15, 2019
- ↑ Anouar Brahem, la curiosité révélée (fr). - via CairnInfo , from: Dans La pensée de midi 2010/1 (No. 30), pages 163–170, accessed September 14, 2019
- ↑ Asfour Stah: Spleen au Mondial (fr). - Turess via Tuniscope , November 3, 2010, accessed September 16, 2019
- ^ Author: Philippe Royer Cinéma (fr). - In: La Croix , December 26, 1996, accessed September 13, 2019
- ↑ Book: Halfaouine, l'enfant des terrasses. - Livres-Cinema , accessed September 14, 2019
- ↑ Database for youth films. - Youth films , accessed September 14, 2019