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Friday 19th @2.00pm | Cork Opera House |
Born in Algiers, Merzak Allouache grew up during the Algerian struggle for independence. He studied filmmaking at Paris’ celebrated IDHEC. He has received much acclaim and accolades for his films dealing with Algerian life and that of the diaspora living in France. Omar Gatlato (1976), his first feature film, set in the neighbourhood of Bab El-Oued in Algiers, was such a success that it changed the course of Algerian cinema, winning the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1994, as well as the Grand Prix at the Arab Film Festival in Paris. During a career that has spanned thirty years, Merzak Allouache’s films have examined the complex social and political history of Algeria and France, with intelligent, tangible characters and situations. He has just completed shooting on his latest film ‘Tamanrasset’ for Arte.
His output of ten features in under thirty years makes him the most prolific filmmaker to stem from the Maghreb - Roy Armes, African Filmmaking North and South of the Sahara (2005)
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| Corona Cork Film Festival is delighted to welcome Merzak Allouache to the festival to present his films, and to speak publicly about his work to Professor Roy Armes. |
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Omar Gatlato
Merzak Allouache
1976 | 90mins | 35mm | Colour | Subtitled
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In this gentle comedy, Omar is a young Algerian man, full of life, with a decent government job, who lives in a crowded apartment with his sisters, parents and grandparents. His main joys in life are to collect Arab and Indian music, to party with his friends, and to dream about romance with women. On one of his cassettes,
given to him by a friend, he hears a woman’s voice which astonishes him. That same friend arranges for him to meet the woman, who looks nothing like the ravishing creature he had imagined on hearing her voice. - All-Film Guide
A watershed film, Omar Gatlato held a mirror up to Algerian male culture and the mirror cracked. The title refers to the expression ‘gatlato al-rujula’, or, roughly, ‘machismo killed him’ and the film’s mordant insights into male posturing and alienation in Algerian society animate this bit of folk wisdom. In mock documentary
style, a young man recounts with wry commentary a typical day in his life in the Bab El-Oued quarter of Algiers, while the camera playfully shows a different story. In following Omar and his friends in their pursuit of happiness, the film examines with shrewd humour the gang values of urban youth; their passion for popular culture (soccer, ‘Hindoo’ movies, Rai concerts), their hidden fear of women, and their social insecurity in an environment where they are marginalized.
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