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The 42nd edition of the Douarnenez Festival, in the west of France, will take place from August 17 to 24 and is singular to at least two titles. It addresses a people, the Algerian people, who has risen since February 16 against its leaders. This edition takes place then in a difficult material context, a challenge for its new director, Christian Ryo, its programmer Virginie Pouchard, the ten other members of the permanent team and the 360 volunteers.
There is a waiting list to lend a helping hand to the Douarnenez Festival, which has experienced a growth of attendance of 3% per year for ten years. The previous edition, devoted to the Congos, was an unprecedented success with its 18,000 entries. Over the years, which people and minorities are in the limelight, the festival has become a must-attend cultural event for nomadic moviegoers, the LGBTQI + community, and the deaf community. which films are subtitled and debates dubbed into sign language. There are also some participants from previous editions every year, fascinated by the militant enthusiasm that this little town of Finistère does not really hide. Once again this year, the Kezako Festival newspaper will be partly animated by Balkan Courier journalists who came for the "Roma, Gypsies and Travelers" year, and never left.
Despite this success and fervor, spending has increased to try to accommodate the public at best and if the balance has been kept between subsidies and revenues, a guarantee to maintain independence, the deficit has become very worrying. A crowfunding campaign, necessary to the continuation of the adventure, made it possible to imagine this new edition. The closure of one of the city's two cinemas, the "K", also pushed the organizers to prodigious inventiveness to allow all spectators to attend screenings in the best conditions. There will be events this year outside the walls to Audierne. All the friends of this institution of the Breton alternative culture were solicited, in particular to keep the six evenings of concert. If all goes well, the team will think about the next edition.
Algeria less familiar than we think
This, decided in May 2018 and announced in August, was partly conceived in ignorance of the events that shook Algeria since February 16, 2019. During the preparatory trip in December, " we felt anguish in the approach of the announcement of a fifth term of Boutefikla, "says Virginie Pouchard," but we did not see coming what would happen . " It is too soon, of course, for the films projected from August 17 to deal with this recent news, but the debates will obviously echo it. As such, we must not miss the palaver on Friday 23rd on a possible "end of the system", where will intervene, among others, the journalist El-Watan and writer Mustapha Benfodil, major intellectual of Algeria today 'hui. An exhibition, #ALGERIE, will present a selection of images of events shared on social networks.
" Everyone has the impression to know a little Algeria in France. However, there are plenty of periods in its history that are almost ignored, "remarks Virginie Pouchard, to highlight how, even before these mobilizations, the whole team went from surprise to surprise. Of course, we will find in the programming a few essential on the war in Algeria: The Battle of Algiers (1966) Gillo Pontecorvo and the documentary that was dedicated to this work artistically and historically unconventional by Malek Bensmaïl in 2018, Having twenty years in the Aures (1972) by René Vautier, on the transformation by a manipulative officer of a group of called refractory bretons into a band of war criminals, or the unique short film of Yann le Masson and Olga Poliakoff on child drawings at war: I'm eight (1961).
But the war is also approached from a feminine point of view by Fatima Sissani, with the documentary Résistantes - Your untangled hair hides a 7 year war (2017), on the figure of Éveline Safir Lavalette who, born into a blackfoot family wealthy, joined the FLN at the age of twenty-eight and became a member of the Constituent Assembly at independence. We will also discover with interest the first two parts of the Algerian novel (2016-2017) by Katia Kameli who, through the collection of a traveling postman, Farouk Azzoug, deconstructs representations of the country from the end of the 18th century to 1980s, filtered by colonial and postcolonial ideologies. Beyond the patriotic myth, voices are heard that tell other stories, those of a people who, this year, took the street.
Women in the spotlight
This is not the first time that the festival, which was created on the need to give voice to minorities, ventures into Algeria. Twenty-five years ago, an edition was devoted to the Kabyle, and the Berber question, like that of the Amazigh language, will be discussed during the palaver. Another delicate issue is that of LGBTQI + activism and it is an Algerian activist, Amel, who will come to talk about it. From France, we can finally evoke Algeria without thinking of the immigrant community that belongs to its history for a century: journalists Samia Messaoudi, a fan of the festival, and Nadir Dendoune, will discuss with the writer and documentary filmmaker Gérard Go.
With regard to recent filmmaking, women are the object of a salutary bias, as directors and protagonists. We can discover Papicha (2019) Mounia Meddour on the fight of a student Algerian in the 1990s. " The four Algerian films that come out in France this year take place during the black decade, " said Virginie Pouchard. Some will be featured in other festivals, such as Hassen Fehrani's latest film, 143 Desert Street (2019). The director will nonetheless be present in Douarnenez and we will be able to discover or rediscover the Bays of Algiers (2006) and In my head a roundabout (2016).
As every year, the Great Tribe extends the previous editions and gives pride of place to the favorites of a team with insatiable curiosity. Two films present a contrasting if not contradictory image of the end of 2010: Our defeats (2019) by Jean-Gabriel Périot, portraits of teenagers of today to the weak political culture, which form a kind of counterpoint to its very noticed A German Youth (2015), and We the People (2019) Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, who follows high school students, young workers and young prisoners, communicating with each other by video messages to write a new Constitution . What will France look like tomorrow? Will it be worn by the battles and debates of the day or will it be indifferent? One thing is certain: for more than forty years, the heart of Douarnenez has beaten stronger than ever in the third week of August, under the sign of commitment.