20 years of African cinema = Camera d'Afrique: the young Arab cinema = Camera Arabe

Shot on a low budget, ‘Camera d’Afrique’ chronicles 20 years of African, predominantly Francophone West African, cinema. The earliest film, ‘Borom Sarret’ (Ousmane Sembene) is from 1963, and ‘Finye’ (Souleymane Cisse), the most recent title from 1983. The documentary also covers the importance of Film Festivals in Tunis and Ouagadougou to African cinema, the debates of the Panafrican Film-Makers’ Federation (Fepaci), as well as the emergence of directors in the 1980’s. ‘Camera Arabe’, Boughedir’s second major documentary looks at the new Arab cinema of the post-colonial era, an era which owes its greatest debt to Egyptian director, Youssef Chahine. New Arab cinema must contend with Government influence and find itself an audience in an industry that is saturated with imported material. Boughedir interviews film-makers from North Africa as well as the wider Arab world and provides clips from a number of clips from key Arab films. On a critical level, ‘Camera Arabe’ investigates notions of memory, the role of women in Arab culture and the problematic identity of the Arab male.