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"New energy" fuels Tunisian film

Posted on: Thursday, 25 May 2006, 04:27 CDT

By Charles Masters

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - For most in the film industry, cinema in Tunisia means a sun-and-sand location for visiting pictures like the "Star Wars" saga.

But the North African country of 10 million people has a vibrant, if small, local industry, whose output is showcased Thursday in the Cannes World Cinema sidebar.

Tunisia is by far the smallest film market among the seven countries featured in the World Cinema section in terms of domestic box office, with only about 1 million annual admissions. (The next smallest is Israel, with 9.5 million admissions.)

"In the last 3-4 years, we have observed a new energy in the industry. Cannes has picked up on this, that there is something new in Tunisia," said Mondher Gargouri, deputy director of cinema production at the national filmotheque.

According to Gargouri, Tunisian audiences have snubbed domestic production since the end of the 1980s. But this is changing, with a dozen Tunisian releases planned for this year. One such film is included in World Cinema, "Khochkhach," a provocative, gay-themed look at sexual frustration.

"It was a big popular success at home and signaled the normalization between Tunisian film and local audiences," Gargouri said.

Insiders say censorship is rare but occasionally there are "suggestions" to change some scenes. "I was surprised to find a great liberty, with no sign of censorship," said Serge Sobczynski, who selected the films for World Cinema.

"There is a thriving semiprofessional movement, with lots of people picking up cameras," he added.

Among other features unspooling at Cannes is "VHS -- Kahloucha" directed by Nejib Belkadhi, a documentary that follows the work of a one-man-band filmmaker and is exemplary of the semiprofessional filmmaking tradition.

Another project is "10 Shorts, 10 Shots," a collection of films brought together by producer Ibrahim Letaief, who used his own funding to assemble 10 filmmakers in a workshop over a year to write and produce the films.

A few years ago, local output was limited to about 2-3 films a year. Now it is about five films a year, largely thanks to generous state support. Feature films typically receive subsidies of about $400,000, with an average Tunisian film costing about $1 million. Tunisia boasts just 40 theaters, with U.S.-made films accounting for half the market share.

Beyond occasional cultural events in Algeria and the Egyptian capital Cairo to showcase Tunisian cinema, there is surprisingly little circulation of Tunisian production across North Africa, in part because of the different dialects spoken in the region. "Let's be frank: The chances of commercial distribution of Tunisian film are pretty slim -- even in neighboring countries," one observer said.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Source: REUTERS

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