De quelques évènements sans signification, Mostafa Derkaoui, Marruecos, 1974, 76'
Around the port’s streets and popular bars of Casablanca, a group of filmmakers conduct discussions with people about their expectations of, and aspirations for, the emerging Moroccan national cinema. When a disgruntled worker kills his superior accidentally, their inquest shifts focus, and they begin to probe the context and motives of the killing. At the heart of DE QUELQUES ÉVÉNEMENTS SANS SIGNIFICATION is an interrogation on the role of cinema (and art) in society, documentary and the Real, and what constitutes an urgency for a national cinema that is being born. This unique filmic experience was conceived as an independent and collective effort of militant filmmakers, actors, musicians, poets and journalists at a time of heightened repression on freedom of expression in Morocco and was funded by the sale of paintings by several contemporary painters. The film was first screened in Paris in 1975 but was immediately taxed with censorship and forbidden from exhibition and export. It was forgotten until a negative print was found in the archives of the Filmoteca de Catalunya in 2016 and restored there. 45 years after its completion, the film will finally be released.
Mostafa Derkaoui was born in Oujda, Morocco in 1944. Between 1963 and 1964, he studied at the French film school Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC, now La Fémis) in Paris before studying at the Polish film school Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa i Teatralna in Łódź from 1965 to 1972. In 1974, Derkaoui and his brother founded the production company Basma Productions. DE QUELQUES ÉVÉNEMENTS SANS SIGNIFICATION was his first feature-length film.
Around the port’s streets and popular bars of Casablanca, a group of filmmakers conduct discussions with people about their expectations of, and aspirations for, the emerging Moroccan national cinema.