The genius impeded by the poor
Amina Zoubir, Algerian artist and videographer, also doing a PhD in contemporary art aesthetic, offers a session on the film Tahya Ya Dido from actor and director Mohamed Zinet.

DR

The unclassifiable Tahya Ya Dido manifest an unique aesthetic in the repertoire of films made in Algeria. Strident sounds, colorful shiny objects and random cuts create a position where the disturbing sensation of strangeness is mixed with the enthusiasm of discovering the city of Algiers throughout a dissimilar prism, shared between fantasy and reality.
The different formats and the visual processing chosen for the performance of the poet Momo give to video art its foundations. With little visibility, this unidentified filmic object from Mohamed Zinet in Algerian cinema of the seventies to the present day, oscillates between desire and pain, trying to liberate the incongruous and the latent. In other words, the cry of a lonely poet who became crazy by wandering, leading himself to the loss of societal and cultural landmarks.
Zinet invokes a process which establishes an alienating system, inherent to the urban condition. When he gets closer, he shows us the intimacy between the streets, the casbah, the coffeehouses and the market ; when he gets farther, it transcends the city through Momo's poems of praise,  revealing the state of the city of Algiers. The cinematic experience glides then to an plastic one, through animation drawings from the painter M'hamed Issiakhem and illustrations documenting the history of colonization and war.
The point of view creates a temporal duality when he offers to choose between "bridge or destiny", illuminated by the light of the present, the past goes toward an unknown and dark future. He finished by saying "Long live to madness when the wise is on vacation", denouncing the distance between himself and the surrounding mediocrities. Then, the childish innocence takes place and condemns the poet's genius to oblivion.

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+ projected movie +
TAHYA YA DIDO - Mohamed Zinet (1971, 76 min)
+ date +
Monday 8th April
+ time +
8pm - doors open at 7:30pm
+ free entry +
Bar & light meals served