Mourad Ben Cheikh

Gérard Courant's "Filmed Diary" of December 14, 2011, produced in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). Between December 7 and 15, 2011, Gérard Courant was invited by the Dubai International Film Festival, in the United Arab Emirates. It was an opportunity for him to film many "Cinematons" of personalities from the Arab world and to continue his "Film Notebooks" from which he brought back 7 episodes.

In December 2010, the people of Tunisia, frustrated by unemployment, economic instability, government corruption, and a steady erosion of individual rights, began widespread protests against president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been the nation's leader since taking office in a coup d'etat in 1987. By the end of January 2011, Ben Ali had been swept from office, and a new democratic government had been voted in. Filmmaker Mourad Ben Cheikh followed the revolution as it took place, and this documentary was the first film to reach theaters on Ben Ali's overthrow and the uprising that brought new leadership to Tunisia. The film features newsreel footage of the demonstrations, interviews with a number of the key players in the movement, contributions from Tunisians of all walks of life on the abuses of the old regime and their hopes for the future, and a look at an artist creating a collage that will tell the story of this key event in the Arab Spring of 2011.

The sole pleasure of Ala, a literature professor and poetry lover, is to share drunkenness with poets. «The Epistle of Mercy», a work about Heaven and Hell, written nearly a thousand years ago, is the subject of the day. In his inebriation, the waitress and bar owner become characters from this work.

The sole pleasure of Ala, a literature professor and poetry lover, is to share drunkenness with poets. «The Epistle of Mercy», a work about Heaven and Hell, written nearly a thousand years ago, is the subject of the day. In his inebriation, the waitress and bar owner become characters from this work.

The sole pleasure of Ala, a literature professor and poetry lover, is to share drunkenness with poets. «The Epistle of Mercy», a work about Heaven and Hell, written nearly a thousand years ago, is the subject of the day. In his inebriation, the waitress and bar owner become characters from this work.

Ali Raïs is a pirate armed by the Bey of Tunis. In the year 124, his fleet was arrested by the Marquis of Santa Cruz and he found himself a prisoner, with his six hundred men in Palermo. Italian witnesses will recognize him and denounce him to the Inquisition as a renegade, an indictment which is liable to the stake. Ali seeks to influence the course of the trial, he denies ever having been a Christian and proclaims himself a Muslim, the son of a Muslim. A long game of failure takes place between the court and the prisoner, he alternately tries to speed up or slow down the course of the trial depending on the nature of the information and testimony available to the inquisitors. We believe we are witnessing a modern trial where the shots alternate according to the investigations. This story of Ali Raïs was however not invented, the character is real and all the facts are recorded in a handwritten account of the hearings of the court of the inquisition.

Ali Raïs is a pirate armed by the Bey of Tunis. In the year 124, his fleet was arrested by the Marquis of Santa Cruz and he found himself a prisoner, with his six hundred men in Palermo. Italian witnesses will recognize him and denounce him to the Inquisition as a renegade, an indictment which is liable to the stake. Ali seeks to influence the course of the trial, he denies ever having been a Christian and proclaims himself a Muslim, the son of a Muslim. A long game of failure takes place between the court and the prisoner, he alternately tries to speed up or slow down the course of the trial depending on the nature of the information and testimony available to the inquisitors. We believe we are witnessing a modern trial where the shots alternate according to the investigations. This story of Ali Raïs was however not invented, the character is real and all the facts are recorded in a handwritten account of the hearings of the court of the inquisition.

A projection towards antiquity, to go back to the origins of the alphabet, to discover the supports of ancient writings, to find Esculape, the divinity of medicine in Greece and his alter ego Eshmoun in Carthage, Dionysos, the god of wine and theater in Athens and its alter ego Bacchus in Rome, see Athenaeum and introduce us to the centuries-old tradition of the olive tree and oil...? To see closely life in the ancient Mediterranean in Carthage, Rome, Athens or Alexandria, we realize that several details of everyday life hardly differed from what we live today.

A projection towards antiquity, to go back to the origins of the alphabet, to discover the supports of ancient writings, to find Esculape, the divinity of medicine in Greece and his alter ego Eshmoun in Carthage, Dionysos, the god of wine and theater in Athens and its alter ego Bacchus in Rome, see Athenaeum and introduce us to the centuries-old tradition of the olive tree and oil...? To see closely life in the ancient Mediterranean in Carthage, Rome, Athens or Alexandria, we realize that several details of everyday life hardly differed from what we live today.