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This article analyses the ethics of representation in Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb's short 2019 documentaries Louisette and Annie, which highlight the participation of mujahidat (female militants) Louisette Ighilahriz and Annie Fiorio-Steiner in the 1954–1962 war of independence from the French. Given how much these women suffered (including under torture) during the war, how to convey their experiences in an ethical manner is a central concern. Bouchareb achieves an ethical balance between avoiding voyeurism and bearing testimony to these women's suffering and active agency through using film techniques that approach his protagonists with respect, a central feature of his ethical cinema. He also relies on techniques that enhance spectatorial identification with the protagonists through triggering emotional responses. I identify and detail specific formal and thematic choices he made to highlight the past's continuing relevance to the present and to centre women's experiences, voices, and bodies. The films finally honour mujahidat (almost a decade after Bouchareb's male-centred epic film Hors la loi). Seeking to both stage and remedy the difficult anamnesis of the war, they bring memories together and carry messages about the need to always fight against injustice that are relevant on both sides of the Mediterranean, sixty years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the complex entanglement of the French and Arabic languages and notes the unfortunate absence of Berber languages in Bouchareb's 2010 Algerian war feature film Hors la loi. Starting from Hamid Naficy's insights about “accented cinema,” the essay analyzes the main characters’ accents in both French and Arabic, various levels of phonological and morphological integration of French loan words into Spoken Algerian Arabic (darija) in the film, as well as the presence of Arabic words in French, demonstrating that colonial contact and migration have created a situation in which both languages and cultures have influenced each other over time. The essay also analyzes the use of specific darija words and the role of code-switching in developing a double-voiced critique of both French and Algerian cultural politics. Finally, the essay explains how Bouchareb's multilingual strategies contribute to making the film relevant at the national, transnational, and regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the close relationship between gender, film genre and intertextuality in Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb’s 2010 feature film Hors la loi to argue that the film’s problematic gender politics detract from Bouchareb’s intended construction of an imagined community. Hors la loi is a historical film about Algerians’ struggle for national liberation from the French, focusing particularly on the Algerian community in Paris. Bouchareb’s multiple filmic intertexts include Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers and Hollywood genres such as gangster/mafia, crime, war and western movies. These film genres all tend to center on male characters, a feature also found in Bouchareb’s film. In Hors la loi, female characters are types and stock characters. The film does not reflect the historical reality of Algerian women’s active participation in the war. Bouchareb’s problematic representation of women’s role in the war is due primarily to the influence of epic Hollywood intertexts, which leave less space for female agency than The Battle of Algiers did. As Bouchareb’s war films have reached large audiences, this blind spot is of concern because women of Maghrebian descent in France are simultaneously centered and silenced in public discourse today, thus increasing the need for developing complex representations of their agency in various cultural productions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A literary criticism of the book "Marguerite," by Leïla Sebbar is presented. It explores the presentation of the French characters in the book on the openness and acceptance to the Arabs, despite showing racism. It also views on the representation of the book on the multicultural relations in France and the state of Franco-Arab relations.

Highlights the different ways in which Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi reformulates feminism as Maghrebian, Islamic and nationalist based from her autobiographical memoir `Dreams of Trespass.' Comparison of the memoir with autobiographical novel `L'Amour, la fantasia,' by Assia Djebar; Analysis of the memoir; Factors that influenced Moroccan nationalism, as well as feminism.