''La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua'' (English: ''The Nubah of the Women of Mount Chenoua)'' is a 1979 Algerian documentary film directed by
Assia Djebar
Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (30 June 1936 – 6 February 2015), known by her pen name Assia Djebar ( ar, آسيا جبار), was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted fo ...
. The film was the first of two films directed by Djebar during her decade-long hiatus from writing, produced outside of
Algerian filmmaking circles.
The accompanying soundtrack was composed by Hungarian
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...
, who visited in Algeria in 1913 to study popular music. The film is dedicated to the musician, as well as to
Zoulikha Oudai
Zoulikha Oudai was an Algerian Chenouas woman who died during the Algerian War of Independence. She was born 7 May 1911 in Hadjout, and grew up in Cherchell. She had five children; after her husband and one of her sons were executed by French f ...
(born Yamina Echaïb), a heroine of
Algerian colonial resistance to whom Djebar also dedicated ''La Femme sans sépulture'' four decades later.
The film borrows the structure and takes the title of ''
nubah'', a traditional Andalusian music form composed of five parts.
The documentary sparked debate in Algeria, and was screened in Carthage in 1978 and at the Venice Biennale a year later, where it won the International Critics' Prize. It is a work studied in many American universities. Only one existing digital copy of the film remains.
Synopsis
Shot in the spring of 1976, the film features Lila, a thirty-year-old architect returning to her native region in the mountains of
Chenoua, in the company of her daughter and her husband, whose legs were disabled after an accident. Between fiction, documentary images and literary incursions, Djebar's first film documents and orchestrates an incessant back and forth between memory, history and the present, focusing on women during the resistance.
Cast
* Zohra Sahraoui
* Aïcha Medeljar
* Fatma Serhan
* Kheira Amrane
* Fatma Oudai
* Khedija Lekhal
* Noweir Sawsan
References
External links
* {{imdb title, 0208326, La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua, 1979 film
Algerian documentary films
Documentary films about politics
Documentary films about women in war