Ahmed Lallem

Born in 1940 in Sétif, after an internship at Yugoslav Television in Belgrade, then Idhec in Paris for eight months, he joined the FLN audiovisual group in Tunis where he found Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina in particular. From 1963 to 1966, he studied at the National School of Cinema, Theater and Television in Lodz, Poland. Back in Algiers, he distinguished himself that year with Elles, a powerful documentary portrait that gives a voice to first and final year high school girls about their difficulties and their expectations. In 1996, Ahmed Lallem found four of them. Algerian Women 30 Years Later confronts yesterday's aspirations and hopes with today's disappointments. Between these two films and in addition to about fifteen subjects between reportage and documentary, he signs in particular Forbidden Zone (Al-Faiza, 1974) and Barriers (Al-Hawajiz, 1977). The first observes the ferment of the revolt and the appearance of the first nationalist militants in an Algerian village on the eve of the war of independence, while, at the time of the extinction of large landed property and under the pressure social movements, the second describes the disintegration of the family of the feudal Hadj Mokhtar. In his Dictionary of new Arab cinemas (Sindbad, 1978), Claude Michel Cluny describes him as "the most intellectual undoubtedly in Algeria in his approach, but also the most original, the most inventive, technically and plastically of his generation". Anxious to remain an assiduous and lucid witness to the upheavals of Algeria, he shot many images, including those of a beautiful and combative Nabila Djahnine in Tizi Ouzou, in Letter to my sister by Habiba Djahnine. From this period, Jeunes d'Alger enété (1993) strives to capture the words of young people from working-class neighborhoods on their daily lives, their concerns, their representations of marriage and women. Based on archival and newsreel images, Kabylie, pays des Amazighs (1999) paints in its own way a portrait of the Amazigh (Berber) cultural claim in Algeria. A keen observer of the changes of his time, Ahmed Lallem will sign China Yellow, China Blue in 1997, a vast fresco rich in exceptional unpublished archival documents on China, from Empress Ts'eu-hi to Deng Xiaoping. Ironic and caustic, a discreet worker, the artist died at the age of 69. For its remarkable intuition and its documentary qualities, the strength of its immersion and the clear and sure speech of its interviewees, for having been only rarely shown and, to our knowledge, never broadcast on the small screen, Elles by Ahmed Lallem Should be prescribed by prescription on TV and to all students. In the mid-1990s, under pressure from the Islamists, the filmmaker left Algeria for France where he tried to continue making films. A time established in Paris, heart-sick since that time, he then retired to Tours. Ahmed Lallem died on October 19, 2009 at Tours hospital.