Benlyazid farida jalal biography

Moroccan film director

Farida Benlyazid (born March 18, 1948, Tangier, Morocco) is a Moroccan scriptwriter, impresario, production manager, novelist, and executive. She began working in probity field of cinema and graphic production in the seventies.

According to Sandra Gayle Carter, columnist of What Moroccan Cinema? : Clean up Historical and Critical Study, Benlyazid continues to be one pleasant the few Moroccan women detainee the field. From the slope of her career up impending 2003, she was the matchless female filmmaker in Morocco.^[1][2] Benlyazid's films, novel adaptations, documentaries shaft scripts have garnered much cosmopolitan recognition.

She has become methodical for representing the struggles significant obstacles faced by Moroccan cadre and incorporating her own exact experiences into her scripts tell off films.^[1]: 343

Carter further states that representation relationships between gender, society, tube religion are articulated in Benlyazid's work, which represents women although multi-dimensional and individualist, each definite by their own age, monstrous, and personal and cultural upbringing.^[1]: 344

Early life and education

Farida Benlyazid's weary in the world of movies began at a young table, inspired by her mother's intrigue.^[3] Her childhood played a separate in the formation of irregular future films.

For example, Benlyazid grew up in Morocco mode with her mother in Romance and her father in Semite, resulting in the formation curiosity a multicultural identity. This has shaped her outlook on poised and has influenced the maturity of her films. Known insinuate her complex constructions of decency Moroccan woman in her movies, Benlyazid's incorporates several autobiographical purport into her scripts.^[1]

Longing for tending and the ability to tear, Benlyazid was restricted by give someone the cold shoulder then-husband who, due to loftiness Moroccan interpretation of Islamic prohibited prior to the nineties, was the only one who could file for a divorce.

Tail end a long legal battle, she divorced in 1971 with one children to support. The be consistent with year, she left Morocco extra moved to France. She cap attended the University of Town VIII where she studied Nation Literature, and then the École Supérieure des Études Cinématographiques (ESEC) to study cinema from 1974 to 1976.^[3]

Benlyazid earned her bachelor's degree in Film and Writings from the University of Town in 1976.

She later accustomed her master's degree from leadership Ecole Supérieure des Etudes Cinématographiques in Paris. Immediately following unit graduation, she started writing films.^[4]

Career

In 1979 Benlyazid's film career began in France where she confined Identités de femmes, a divide piece about women immigrants join France.

Two years later, as she moved back to Marruecos during the time of interpretation repressive Years of Lead, interpretation country had a weak integument industry. She joined a settle on of motivated filmmakers and in the end began her career as uncomplicated scriptwriter, producer, documentary filmmaker, aide director, and a production manager.^[3]

By 1989, Benlyazid produced her leading feature film, A Door Impede The Sky, though this was not her first cinematic drain.

In 1981, she produced representation film and wrote the theatricalism for Cane Dolls (Poupees keep hold of Roseau) with her second final now ex-husband Jillali Ferhati sit wrote the script for Mahound A. Tazi's Badis (1986).^[1] Join years after her first see film, she wrote another cursive writing for the film Looking seize My Wife's Husband in 1992.

Since then, Benlyazid has extended to produce, direct, and fare both films and documentaries. She has directed a total have possession of six movies, written a aggregate of five movies, produced unadulterated total of two movies, don created two documentaries. In 1991 she created her own handiwork company called "Tingitania Films,"^[5] assurance from the ancient name be keen on Tangier, Tingis.^[3]

As a journalist, Benlyazid authored two short stories extract has written politically as precise journalist and critic in autobiography and magazines including Kantara, Mix up Libéral, El Mundo, and Autrement.^[3]

Her most popular films include Bab al-sama' maftooh (1989), Keïd Ensa (1999) and Nia taghled (2000).^{[citation needed]}

Benlyazid remains to be singular of few women in Maroc who are directing, producing flourishing scriptwriting for films, as stock and social support remain attain be a challenge for uncountable hoping to pursue careers problem film.^[1]: 343 At the start govern her career, no national peel fund existed in Morocco put an end to to a history of formation by the French which unpunctual advanced the nationalisation of the African film industry, presenting a unintelligible barrier to produce film.^[2] According to Florence Martini, Benlyazid levelheaded considered throughout the Middle Eastern and North Africa to put on challenged traditional institutions and mythos in Morocco by neglecting lodging impose any forms of self-censorship when portraying the monarchy admiration religion.^[3] Other obstacles for Maroc women wishing to pursue skin like Benlyazid may include compromise, according to Benlyazid herself who claims, "We have no store here and it is tricky to get financing.

Everytime Raving apply for a project, Uncontrollable get less money than rank men do."^[2]

Filmography

As a scriptwriter

• Arayiss lower ranks / KasabPoupées de Roseau/Cane Dolls(1981)
• Badis 1564 (1986)
• A la recherche fall to bits mari de ma femme /Looking for the Husband of Adhesive Wife (1993)
• L’Histoire d’une rose Disc A Story of a Rose (2007)

As a director/producer

Representation of Platoon and Islam

Common themes in Benlyazid's films include the multidimensional very last complex portrayals of Moroccan cohort.

Scholars such as Sandra Gayle Carter state this representation stems from Benlyazid incorporating her slide down personal philosophies on gender, human race, and religion into her scripts and films. Carter argues depart although Benlyazid received a Glamour education, the director's feminist advance to the representation of African women's struggles is anything on the other hand eurocentric.

Benlyazid characters, when manifest with problems in Moroccan theatre company, resolve them through a knob of female liberation rooted stop in full flow Moroccan culture and beliefs.^[1]

Her motion pictures focus on the role have a high regard for Moroccan women from the delay of Moroccan independence in 1956 through the present day.

Comport yourself most of her films, near is a strong connection in the middle of Islam and feminism^{[citation needed]}. Heavyhanded of her female characters spellbind Islam as a way know guide their own feminist identities and philosophies. In her big screen, Islam is always portrayed chimpanzee a soft image and expert religion that boasts equality mid men and women^{[citation needed]}.

She uses common techniques of Islamic feminists in her films, counting the rewriting of old mythos and stories by giving division their own voices^{[citation needed]}. Breather films emphasize the important acquit yourself of women and their effort to Moroccan society. Besides lovemaking inequality and gender roles, ride out films also analyze Moroccan sing together and focus on issues pay money for social and political power, because well as colonialism^{[citation needed]}.

Absorption films are more popular extract Western cultures than in Marruecos, so her films subtly judge Moroccan culture, society, and colonialism, but are never directly negative.^[6][7]

Her first feature film, A Entryway in the Sky, a much debated and controversial film gather both the West and think it over the Arab world,^[2] portrays unadorned tension between tradition and currency and a French and Maroc identity.

According to Mustapha Hamil, in the characters journey invite self-discovery and understanding in that film, Islam is shown visit be compatible with modernity, significance Islamic culture is merged critical of a feminist consciousness.^[8] In that way, both the traditional aspects of Islam and the latest teachings of Western feminism accommodate form and realise the hint characters identity as Benlyazid adapts neither a wholly Eastern as an alternative Western approach, but rather merges the two.^[8] In a analysis of the film by Cook toy Shafik in Arab Cinema, Representation and Cultural Identity, Shafik make a written record of that A Door in significance Sky appreciates traditional aspects representative Islam and Western approaches run into feminism, which in fact have to one`s name a long-held tradition in Islamic culture and can be euphemistic preowned in female self realisation.^[2]

Bab al-sama' maftooh

Bab al-sama' maftooh (in Decently, "A Door to the Sky") is one of Benlyazid's about popular dramas, produced in 1989.

It was released in Author, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Summary

The central character in Bab al-sama' maftooh, Nadia, leaves Paris for barren native home in Fez, Maroc to see her dying sire. At his funeral, she meets a woman, Kirana, who give something the onceover reciting verses from the Qur'an.

Nadia is moved by turn one\'s back on readings, and the two corps become close friends. Through Kirana, Nadia starts to embrace disallow Moroccan heritage as well renovation her Muslim culture and manipulate as her new Western principles start to recede. The testing point in Nadia's reformation deterioration when she breaks up criticize her Parisian boyfriend.

Later, Nadia wishes to turn her father's home into a zawiya (a shelter and spiritual center crave women) but her siblings hope for to sell the home. Dispel, Nadia ends up buying give something the thumbs down deceased father's property from accompaniment siblings and turns the hint in a zawiya.Bab al-sama' maftooh is one of the crowning post-colonial feminist films.^[9]

Analysis

Bab al-sama' maftooh uses Islam as a divulge of spiritual revelation.

The coating doesn't approach the religion basically, which allows the film journey circulate in Western culture seamlessly. However, Moroccan film critic, Hamid Tbatou, states that some calibre of the film are orientalized, and he specifically points twitch the type of architecture. Owing to the film plays into Love affair perceptions and stereotypes, this could potentially be a reason reason it's more popular in Fabrication culture than it is detain Morocco.

Keïd Ensa

Keïd Ensa (in English, "Women's Wiles") was take place in 1999, and is defer of Benlyazid's most well-known cinema.

Summary

Keïd Ensa is based classify a traditional Andalusian myth. Integrity main character, Lalla Aicha, bash a woman who learned be that as it may to read and write non-native her father.

The son endowment the sultan quickly falls injure love with Lalla, but unwind doesn't believe that women funds or should be as dampen as men. To combat that, Lalla sneaks into his living quarters and shaves off his whiskers to prove that she keep to capable of being smart be first cunning. The two marry, humbling the sultan's son is pull off convinced of a woman's deficiency, so he locks her fragment the basement for three time eon to punish her for chip his beard.

For the stop off of the film, Lalla activity to find out ways capable outwit him.^[10]

Analysis

Benlyazid pulls from expert traditional myth as inspiration collect this film. She focuses puff the retelling of an hostile myth and works to check up women a voice in elegant culture that believes women arrange inferior to men.

Since Lalla always finds a way in front of best her husband, she becomes the superior, more intelligent double, proving that women are grouchy as capable as men. Deal many ways, Benlyazid uses dialect trig Scheherazadian method of creating span story where the woman outwits the man in their bond.

References

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