Nouri Bouzid

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Nouri Bouzid 2007 during the presentation of his film " Making of - Kamikaze " at the Cines del Sur Granada Film Festival in Spain

Nouri Bouzid ( Arabic نوري بوزيد, DMG Nūrī Būzaid ; * 1945 in Sfax ) is a Tunisian film director , writer and screenwriter . For his films Man from Ashes and Making Of - Kamikaze , he was awarded the Tanit d'Or at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia in 1986 and 2006 . Bouzid is the recipient of several high-ranking awards, including the Ibn Rushd Prize , which he was awarded in 2007 for having “made outstanding contributions to freedom of expression, equality and democracy in the Arab world”. He also worked as an actor and teaches at film schools and the University of Tunis .

Life and education

Bouzid was born and raised in the south of the country, the city of Sfax. There he completed his school days and was an active member of the Louis Lumière film club before continuing his higher education in Tunis. In 1966 he completed advanced training with Tunisian television and then began his studies at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris. After strikes broke out at the university in France in May 1968 , Bouzid finished his studies at the Brussels School of Film and Theater (INSAS) in 1972 after moving . He directed the graduate short film Duel in 1972 and took part in the filming of Rendezvous in Bray by director André Delvaux as part of his internship at the end of his studies. Back in Tunisia, he joined the "Perspectives Tunisiennes" movement, one of the most important Tunisian opposition movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and was sentenced to imprisonment by the State Security Court for membership of the Groupe d'Etudes et d'Action Socialiste Tunisia (GEAST) which he had to serve between 1973 and 1979. He was subjected to humiliation and torture during this time and wrote poems in prison which he later published.

In 1983 Bouzid met Ahmed Bahaeddine Attia while working as an assistant director at Carthago Films , one of Tarak Ben Ammar's production companies . A long collaboration resulted from this encounter. From 1985 to 1996 he worked as a screenwriter on films for Cinétéléfilms , Attia's production company, which produced the films by Férid Boughedir and Moufida Tlatli , among others . Attia was also the producer of some of Bouzid's films. When an industrialist and financier asked him to found a film school in 1994, he complied and founded École Des Arts et du Cinéma (EDAC) in Tunis. Bouzid teaches there. Many technicians emerged from EDAC who are now active in the Tunisian film industry. Bouzid also teaches at other film schools and the University of Tunis . He is the father of the director Leyla Bouzid , known soon as I open my eyes (As I Open My Eyes). In addition to the Ibn Ruschd Prize in 2007, he received the Commandeur de l'Ordre tunisien du Mérite (Tunisian Order of Merit) in the same year, has been the holder of the Officier des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres since 2009 and was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d in 2013 'Honored by the Legion of Honor of France .

During a discussion with students near the campus of the Université de Tunis El Manar in April 2011, the director was attacked by a "bearded" man who shouted "Allahou Akbar" and rushed towards him with an iron bar, hit Bouzid on the head and fled. Thanks to a hat that Bouzid wore, a serious injury was prevented, but a head wound was sustained. A few days later, at a meeting of the Ennahda party, the rapper PsycoM chanted that if he could, he would use a Kalashnikov against Bouzid, which is said to have been cheered by the crowd. Bouzid then decided to take legal action against the rapper and Ennahda.

Career

Filmmaker

Shaped by his experiences in prison and the reprisals he was exposed to, Bouzid has repeatedly taken up critical topics in his films and thus developed into one of the best-known and most successful directors in the Arab world. With his feature film debut Man from Ashes , he focused on abuse and homosexuality and presented the film at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown in the Un Certain Regard section . In Tunisia, after the Carthage film festival, where it was awarded the Tanit d'Or, the film caused a scandal, but its success abroad, various prizes and the enthusiastic audience ultimately spoke a different language. Although Bouzid approached the subject in his pictures sensitively, objectively and without sensationalism, Arab fundamentalists tried to boycott the film by accusing the director of Zionism. "A Jew and a prostitute helping a Tunisian boy who was raped by his employer - that was too much for many."

With his second feature film Les Sabots en or , Bouzid took another big risk. With the film he processed his own humiliating experiences of imprisonment. The film describes the complete uprooting of a 45-year-old intellectual who, after serving his prison sentence, can no longer find his wife and no longer understands his children, his country and his religion. With the film he took up the dispute between fundamentalists and leftists. He wrote the screenplay in 1986/87, the film was shot in 1988 and then there was a struggle for approval, as the Tunisian censors were shocked by the torture and love scene. Bouzid fought for his film, the requested shortening of 14 minutes, including the most important scenes of the film for Bouzid, was cut by 3 minutes after tough negotiations and after further negotiations only by 35 seconds - 20 from the torture scene and 15 from the one Love scene - but only for Tunisia, the negative remained uncut. The film was shown in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes at the 1989 film festival and won the main prize at the Kourigba film festival in Morocco .

In 1992 he tackled the subject of sex tourism with his film Bezness - Business - The business with longing . The term Bezness is derived from the English word "business" and the word "relationship", it describes profit-oriented activities of locals over tourists with the aim of gaining an advantage. Mainly, however, by playing feelings of love, the goal is pursued to gain material and financial advantages and / or to stay in Europe, so that the word bezness is to be understood here in the narrower sense. In Tunisia, tourism is one of the main sources of income for the state, the film brought Bouzid once more trouble. The subsidies and the shooting license for Tunis were revoked by the government, he had to leave out expensive scenes from the film, but the film was completed. The film was shown at the International Mediterranean Film Festival in Cologne , among others , and when the international recognition became loud, it was also broadcast on Tunisian television.

For the documentary La guerre du Golfe ... et après? , a joint effort by the directors Bouzid, Borhane Alaouié, Néjia Ben Mabrouk, Mostafa Darkaoui and Elia Suleiman , the filmmakers dealt with the Second Gulf War . Each of the five directors contributed their own short film for this project, produced by Ahmed Bahaeddine Attia, for which Bouzid C'est Shéhérazade qu'on assassine contributed. With the feature films Tunisienne and clay dolls , which deal with the everyday life of the housemaids in Tunisia, the "Bonnes", sent by the families in the surrounding area to the cities to help with the household and thus improve the family's income, Bouzid achieved two more Films that have found international recognition and have been honored with prizes. For clay dolls , Bouzid wanted to make the situation of these domestic workers public and show characters who rebel against the system. Although Tunisia has progressive legislation or progressive labor law, Bouzid shows in his film that minors were also exploited in this way, nobody cared about the fact that schooling is actually compulsory for the children. The film was shown and honored at the Freiburg International Film Festival, among others.

Nouri Bouzid and Lotfi Abdelli 2007 during the presentation of the film " Making of - Kamikaze " at the Cines del Sur Granada Film Festival in Spain

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 prompted Bouzid to investigate why terrorism arises. He observed that the western media always asked the same questions about motivation or goals when another terrorist attack was carried out somewhere and there were few answers to these questions. Bouzid felt that it was time to fill some of these gaps and shortcomings and find answers to some of the questions. He was deeply convinced that the discussion of this topic and the search for explanations must be given by people from the Muslim culture. For his film about the young Tunisian breakdancer Bahta ( Lotfi Abdelli ) he immersed himself deeply into the ideology of fundamentalists, whose method is brainwashing. He said of his film: “My way of denouncing you is to research your methods.” Consistently, but with a responsible diagnosis, he created the film, which received very good reviews worldwide and was rewarded with numerous awards. For Bouzid this meant receiving the Tanit d'Or and the award for Best Supporting Actress at the 2006 Carthage Film Festival for the second time . In total, the film has received over 25 awards, including Best Screenplay at the Tribeca Film Festival and Best Leading Actor for Abdelli at FESPACO in 2007. Abdelli also won over him for his role, including Best Actor at the Tribeca Film Festival or the Mostra de Valencía - Cinema del Mediterrani. The co-producer for this film is the German director and film producer Frieder Schlaich .

In addition to his work as a director and screenwriter for films such as Halfaouine - Time of Dreams or Time of Men, Time of Women , Bouzid has also appeared in several productions as an actor, for example in Lautlos im Weltraum by Douglas Trumbull or the film A Child with a Name Jesus by Franco Rossi in the role of Rabbi Fares . In the television film La télé arrive by Tunisian director Moncef Dhouib, Bouzid was the owner of a café and slipped into the role of an accordion player for his own 2013 film Millefeuille . His current film Les épouvantails , shown as a world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival 2019 , will open the Carthage Film Festival in 2019. The festival is usually held in Tunis in the first week of November of the year, but will be brought forward by one week due to the presidential elections in Tunisia and will therefore take place from October 26th to November 2nd, 2019. The film tells the story of Zina and Djo, who returned to Tunisia from the Syrian front in 2013, where they were kidnapped and raped.

author

Bouzid published several collections of poems, some of which are set to music and sung by Anouar Brahem . In 2014 he published Zayer Qdim in Arabic (Tunisian dialect) , composed between 1974 and 1984. It contains poems from the time of his imprisonment and writings from the years after his release. The collection was published by Dar Afek in Tunis. The volume of poems reflects the political, social and poetic atmosphere of the 70 years in Tunisia, a time when the Tunisian intellectuals revolted against the paternalistic authoritarianism of Habib Bourguiba . In 2013 the book for the film Palace of Silence was published , which was published jointly by Bouzid and Moufida Tlatli.

Filmography

Director

Screenwriter

actor

bibliography

  • 2013: Les Silences du palais - Scénario du film (French Edition)
  • 2014: Zayer Qdim (Vieux visiteur) - poetry book

Film festivals (selection)

  • 1986: Man of Ashes - Cannes International Film Festival
  • 1989: Les Sabots en or - Cannes International Film Festival
  • 2002: Bezness - Business - The business with longing - International Mediterranean Film Festival Cologne
  • 2007: Making of - Kamikaze - French Film Days Tübingen
  • 2007: Making of - Kamikaze - Filmfest Hamburg
  • 2008: Making of - Kamikaze - Beyond Europe X, Cologne
  • 2019: Les épouvantails (en: The Scarecrows) - Opening film of the Carthage Film Festival (JCC)

Nominations (selection)

  • 1986: Gold Hugo - Man from Ashes - Chicago International Film Festival
  • 1997: Golden Bayard - Tunisiennes - Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film
  • 2002: Golden Bayard - clay puppets - Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film
  • 2002: Golden Montgolfiere - clay dolls - Nantes Three Continents Festival
  • 2003: Grand Prix - clay puppets - Freiburg International Film Festival
  • 2007: Golden Alhambra - Making of - Kamikaze - Granada Film Festival Cines del Sur
  • 2007: Best Foreign Film Making of - Kamikaze - Tribeca Film Festival
  • 2012: Black Pearl Award - Millefeuille - Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) in Abu Dhabi
  • 2019: Sconfini - Les épouvantails - Venice International Film Festival 2019

Awards (selection)

  • 1986: Golden Charybdis - Man from Ashes - Taormina International Film Festival
  • 1986: Tanit d'Or - Man of Ashes - Carthage Film Festival (JCC)
  • 19 ??: First Prize - Les Sabots en or - Festival du cinéma africain de Khouribga
  • 1997: Golden Antigone - Tunisiennes - Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival
  • 1997: Audience Award - Tunisiennes - Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival
  • 1997: OCIC Award - Honorable Mention - Tunisiennes - Venice International Film Festival
  • 1997: Elvira Notari Prize - Tunisiennes - shared with Amel Hedhili , Nadia Kaci and Leila Nassim - Venice International Film Festival
  • 2001: Best script - Zeit der Männer, Zeit der Frauen - shared with Moufida Tlatli at the Film Festival Cologne
  • 2002: Audience Award - Clay Puppets - Nantes Three Continents Festival
  • 2003: Ecumenical Jury Award - puppets made of clay - Internationales Filmfestival Freiburg
  • 2007: Tanit d'Or - Making of - Kamikaze - Carthage Film Festival (JCC)
  • 2007: Best Editing - Making of - Kamikaze - FESPACO
  • 2007: Asian and Arab Competition Award - Making of - Kamikaze - Cinefan - Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema
  • 2007: Muhr Award - Making of - Kamikaze - Dubai International Film Festival
  • 2007: Golden Tauro - Making of - Kamikaze - Taormina International Film Festival
  • 2007: Best Screenplay Jury Award - Making of - Kamikaze - Tribeca Film Festival
  • 2007: Golden Hoggar - Making of - Kamikaze - Oran International Film Festival
  • 2019: Special Prize for Human Rights - HRNs: Les Épouvantails - Venice International Film Festival 2019

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film art as a means against social hypocrisy. - Ibn Rushd Fund for Freedom of Thought , accessed September 18, 2019
  2. ↑ a b Biography of Nouri Bouzid (fr). - L'encyclopédie du cinéma and also the biography of Nouri Bouzid. - Films from Africa , accessed September 18, 2019
  3. ↑ a b c Author: IB Le cinéaste tunisien Nouri Bouzid publie un livre de poésie (fr). - In: Kapitalis , May 2, 2014, and also Les Silences du palais - Scénario du film (French Edition) (fr). - Kissly , accessed September 18, 2019
  4. ^ Filmography Leyla Bouzid. - IMDb , accessed September 18, 2019
  5. ↑ Author: Synth LBC Nouri Bouzid, n'admettra pas un régime islamiste (fr). - In: Turess: via Tekiano , May 13th 2011 and also author: Ahmed Sahraoui Nouri Bouzid porte plainte contre Psycho M et Ennahdha (fr). - In: Tunisie Numerique , May 5, 2011, accessed September 19, 2019
  6. ↑ Author: Horst Schäfer The man from ashes. - In: Kinder Jugendfilm Korrespondenz , issue 61-1 / 1995, accessed on September 18, 2019
  7. ↑ Go to the extreme. - Taz , November 29, 1995, accessed September 18, 2019
  8. ↑ Bezness - The business with longing. - filmportal.de , accessed on September 18, 2019
  9. ↑ "Bezness" cases: How intercultural couples suffer from love cheaters. - Focus Online , July 21, 2018, accessed September 19, 2019
  10. ^ Fragments d'une Tunisie contemporaine: La guerre du Golfe ... et après? (fr). - MuCEM , accessed on September 19, 2019
  11. ^ Author: Hans-Jörg Rother clay dolls. - In: EZEF , June 2005, accessed on September 18, 2019
  12. ↑ Making of - Kamikaze. - Filmgalerie 451 , accessed on September 18, 2019
  13. ↑ Time of men, time of women. - Film releases , accessed September 18, 2019
  14. ↑ Silent Running (fr). - linternaute.fr , accessed on September 18, 2019
  15. ↑ Author: Hamza Marzouk JCC 2019: "Les Epouvantails" de Nouri Bouzid en ouverture (fr). - In: L'Economiste Maghrebin , September 7, 2019, accessed on September 18, 2019
  16. ↑ Author: Kaleem Aftab Review: The Scarecrows (en). - In: Cineuropa , September 9, 2019, accessed on September 18, 2019
  17. ↑ Zayer Qdim (Vieux visiteur) - (fr). - Littératures du Maghreb , accessed on September 18, 2019

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bouzid, Nouri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Tunisian film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Sfax , Tunisia