Competition
North American


ALIENATIONS



Country of production: France, Algeria
Year: 2003
Language: French, Arabic
Mins: 105

Director: Malek Bensmail
Cinematography: Malek Bensmail
Music: Phil Marboeuf
Editing: Mathieu Bretaud
Sound: Hamid Osmani
Producer: Gerald Collas
Production company: INA
Source: Michčle Gautard
4, avenue de l'Europe
94360 Bry-sur-Marne, FRANCE
Phone: +33 1 49 83 29 92
Fax: +33 1 49 83 31 82
mgautard@ina.fr
malek.bensmail.free.fr/film_alien


The voices of the mad tell the truth of a country.

Algerian society has undergone profound upheavals over the last century, beginning when colonialism brought the European and Arab worlds into violent contact. Since independence in 1962, and to an even greater extent over the last ten years, Algeria has continuously been affected by oppositions of tradition and modernity, and between religious and democratic values.

Here, those conflicts are revealed through the conscious and subconscious actions of patients within an Algerian mental hospital. ALIENATIONS follows doctors and patients through the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Constantine, Algeria - a city of mystical tradition and startling modernity - examining the illnesses afflicting Algerians today as they attempt to deal with religious, political, economic, and family turmoil.

Tough, startling, and constantly evocative, ALIENATIONS takes its place alongside TITTICUT FOLLIES, SHOCK CORRIDOR, as films that profoundly evoke the experience of mental hospitals with depth rather than facile ridicule.


Bensmail was born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1966. He studied filmmaking in Paris and St. Petersburg (Lenfilm), and directed a production company between 1990 and 1993. He has won awards at Cinema du Reel (Paris), Montreal, Sao Paulo, and beyond.

filmography as director
(selected)
ALIENATIONS (2003)
DEMOKRATIA (2001)
VACATION DESPITE EVERYTHING (2001)
BOUDIAF, ASSASSINATED HOPE (1998)
DECIBLED (1998)
CULTURE PUB ALGERIAN SPECIAL (1997)
TERRITORIES (1997)
ALGERIAN TV SHOW (1996)
VISIONS OF BALI (1996)

Sunday 04-Apr-2004 1:00 PM Gallery Theatre