Transnational Moroccan Cinema

This project explores the emergence of Moroccan cinema over the past two decades as one of the most significant national cinemas in Africa and the Arab world. It will be argued that a transnational perspective is required to fully appreciate the reasons behind the recent, unprecedented rise of Moroccan cinema (from a handful of films per year in the 1970s to 25 feature films annually since 2000), as well as developing a broader understanding of Moroccan cinema's increasingly significant contribution to world cinema. The project will bring together academics and filmmakers to analyse four key areas that have shaped contemporary Moroccan cinema as they relate to this national/transnational dynamic:

1.The contribution of filmmakers from the Moroccan diaspora to the rise of Moroccan cinema since the 1990s. These filmmakers, working for the most part between Europe and the Maghreb are at once inside and outside of the configuration of 'national' cinema as it is traditionally understood - forcing us to re-think what constitutes Moroccan 'national' cinema, where it is located, created and disseminated.

2. The pivotal function of film festivals in Morocco (and abroad) as a means of promoting transnational investment, creative and institutional collaboration in the Moroccan film industry. International film festivals are now central to the construction of cinema knowledge as well as the behind-the-scene mechanics of finance, distribution, and exhibition. Field trips to Moroccan and European festivals by the research team will thus form a vital part of the research project, allowing for an assessment of the current state of Moroccan (trans-)national cinema as art and business.

3. The increasing presence of Moroccan women filmmakers since the late-1990s. Moroccan women's cinema is concerned with the local and the trans-local in terms of the themes addressed in these films, as well as in the financial packages employed by these filmmakers to produce and distribute their work. Research in this strand of the project will therefore focus on the intersection of gender and trans-locality (as a subset of transnationalism) in Moroccan women's filmmaking.

4. Moroccan cinema's response to the challenges and opportunities of digital cinema. Will the greater accessibility of digital filmmaking technology and multiple platform exhibition channels allow a more diverse 'national' cinema to emerge? Can such modes of digital production, distribution and exhibition build on the critical and commercial success enjoyed by Moroccan filmmakers since the late 1990s, while allowing for a cinema that is more widely viewed both nationally and internationally? This research strand will place a particular emphasis on strategies and trends in distribution - traditionally seen as the weak link in Moroccan cinema. In an age of multi-platform, transnational distribution and the increasing threat to the film industry of digital piracy, what will be the effect on Moroccan cinema of emerging formal and informal digital distribution networks?

A key objective of this project is to link academic researchers with the filmmakers, critics, policy makers, festival programmers and audiences who are shaping the future of Moroccan cinema. The project will therefore involve field trips to archives in Morocco and Paris, as well as to major Moroccan film festivals. This engagement with the industry and artists will lead to the publication (online and in print) of a comprehensive set of data relating to production, distribution and exhibition in Morocco since the late 1990s, as well as extensive interviews with key figures in the Moroccan film industry and a major, co-authored book on Transnational Moroccan Cinema. Finally, two bursaries linked to the project will allow two Moroccan filmmakers to spend three months in residence at the world-renowned London Film School, with the work they produce being premiered at the Africa in Motion Film Festival (Edinburgh).

The project will generate pathways to impact with a range of non-academic audiences, professional groups and organisations:

(1) Archival work conducted in the first two years of the project will provide the most extensive set of statistics on production, distribution and exhibition in Moroccan cinema since 1999. Some of this data (related to exhibition and production visas) currently exists on the Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM)'s website, though it is not accompanied by any sustained analysis and, in some cases, data is incomplete. The aim is to produce a much fuller set of data relating to all areas of production, distribution and exhibition in Moroccan cinema since 1999 and to disseminate this via the project website to policy-makers, journalists, festival organisers, distributors and exhibitors working in the Moroccan film industry.

(2) A major part of this project involves field trips to international festivals in Europe and Morocco to conduct interviews with delegates, festival programmers and organisers. The information and opinions gathered in these interviews will be disseminated via the project website and will be applied in the co-authored monograph to an analysis of the role and transnational reach of these festivals. These outputs will be of interest to organisers of international festivals such as Cinémaghreb [Brest, France] and the Mediterranean Film Festival in Tetouan that focus on cinema from the Global South and could inform the programming and strategic direction taken by their festivals in the future. The project also includes collaboration with two specific festivals: The Martil festival in Morocco, and the Africa in Motion Festival in Scotland. The organising committees at both festivals have agreed to host an academic symposium linked to the research project. Members of the festival organisation, as well as filmmakers from Morocco and France will be participating directly with academics at these two symposia. This open forum between industry, the academy and public audiences offers a clear pathway to impact for the research emerging from this project.

(3) As mentioned in point (1) (above) data does exist in relation to production, distribution and exhibition in the archives of the CCM, through this has yet to be fully analysed or exploited for research purposes in any systematic way. This data, along with research on the increasing importance of women filmmakers and the impact of digital technologies on contemporary Moroccan cinema that will appear in the monograph co-authored by the PI, CI and RF will be of particular interest to policy makers in the CCM and Moroccan film industry and could help to shape future policy and funding decisions.

(4) The two symposia linked to festivals in Morocco and the UK that form part of this project, allow the PI, CI and RF to connect their work to an informed, non-academic, international public audience who will be attending these two festivals. The Martil festival attracts over 500 visitors annually, while the Africa in Motion (AiM) festival reached a total audience of 5000 in 2012. In addition to the more traditional academic panels and keynotes, the symposia linked to these festivals will include round table discussions with filmmakers, industry figures and critics, introductions to screenings of films and Q&A sessions with filmmakers, all of which will be open to the public audience attending these festivals. The AiM festival will also provide the venue for the premiere of the short films made by Moroccan filmmakers following their residency at the London Film School as part of this project. All of these events thus represent an important opportunity to establish a greater connection with public audiences, whose further engagement and participation in the project will be encouraged by linking these events to social media to promote the activities of the research project and the material contained on the project website.