Moumen Smihi, The East Wind / El Chergui, film still
Moumen Smihi, The East Wind / El Chergui, film still
Moumen Smihi, The East Wind / El Chergui
Morocco 1975, 35mm, 80 min
'For El Chergui, my initial motivation was to try to discern through cinema certain aspects of Moroccan society at a moment in its history' – Moumen Smihi
In the mid-1950s, Tangier was still an International Zone. Smihi’s film presents the city at the eve of its independence, as Aïcha resorts to magical practices to try to prevent her husband from taking a second spouse. Around her, a society of women creates its own form of active resistance as the larger independence movement grows around it. Celebrated on its release in 1976 by Cahiers du Cinema, they declared El Chergui as 'the work we have all been waiting for, a work which is important for the way it makes popular action supreme by allowing it to be shown as it is, rather than in the way people choose to fossilize it.' Through a structure of montage and opposition, Smihi’s arresting images present a society torn by the contradictions of colonialism, religion, patriarchy, and resistance.
Moumen Smihi, Si Moh, The Unlucky Man / Si Moh, pas de chance
France 1971, 16mm transferred to video, 17min
Shot in Paris after Smihi completed film school at the influential IDHEC, Si Moh is an investigation of the life of migrant workers in France. Connected back to the Maghreb by postcards and to his fellow migrants by shared experiences of alienation, the character Si Moh negotiates the industrialized suburbs of Paris followed by Smihi’s intimate camera.
Film programme notes by Peter Limbrick