Algerian documentary filmmaker Jean-Pierre Lledo's Algeria, Unspoken Stories screens at TIFF. (Steve Carty/CBC)
Jean Pierre Lledo tells African stories, mostly because Jean-Pierre Lledo is an African story. He is the son of a Berber Jewish mother and a Spanish father; his Algerian family history dates back over four centuries. Lledo, now in his fifties, was born in the town of Thamsin, Algeria, not far from Morocco, and grew up among the ravages of the Algerian war of independence. The brutal campaign, from 1955 to 1962, resulted not only in the defeat of the French colonialist administration, but also in the exodus of close to a million people who either fled or were pushed out by the new Muslim regime.
Exiled in 1993 to France along with much of the country’s leftist intelligentsia, Lledo is committed to recording the fading memories of those terrible years — as he did in his astounding Algerian Dreams (2003) and now in its companion piece, the superbly elegiac Algeria, Unspoken Stories, which debuts at TIFF. Lledo trained as a filmmaker in Moscow in the early ’70s, and his documentaries reflect a socialist sensibility, combined with the patient filmmaking techniques of the Russian masters. Algeria, Unspoken Stories is an extraordinary recollection of the memories of four Algerians who experienced the ravages of independence and its aftermath. He recently spoke to CBCNews.ca, in very broken English, about the importance of memory and how vital it is that African filmmakers get to tell their own tales.
Q: How difficult is it to be a documentary filmmaker in a country that doesn’t want you, and doesn’t want your films made? [Lledo was allowed back to the country to make the film.]
A: The difficulty comes because you are treated like a criminal — because when there is a taboo, and you touch on that taboo, it is very difficult for the state to accept that. Sometimes, you even think that you are in the wrong, when it is the state that is in the wrong. They don’t want the memory. When I made Algerian Dreams, I had nervous depression for the first time in my life, but it was like a vaccine — this time I was stronger.
Q: How important is it for you to keep doing this, to keep telling the stories of those terrible years?
A: The Algerian state is an authoritative state — which means that the state thinks that they are the only ones who can make the memory. In Algeria, there are no teachers of history, no professors — because they are afraid for their life. It is a real taboo, history. In France or Canada, you go to the internet and type in a name or a place, and there comes up much information. For Algeria, if you type in a name or an event — there is no information, no archive. The only source of information? It is the people, the memory of people. I saw with this film that the people want to speak, because when there is a commemoration of an event, only the official people speak — we hear only their version — and people don’t want to die with their memories. They want to share them.
Q: Is there a commonality that you see running through films made by Africans, in Africa?
A: I see that in African cinema, it is never about memory. There are maybe one or two, but in Africa, it is mostly theatrical, fiction film. Usually, there are [problems] between the state and [film] director — they are fine with fiction, but not documentary — because a documentary film is more violent, more real. I started out as a fiction filmmaker, but when I was in exile, many, many questions of memory stayed with me, and I think at this moment, only documentary cinema can answer these questions. The state waits for the people to die, so the memory will die — and when it is all forgotten, they will no longer fear the documentarian. This explains why I never use archival photos; my archive is the people.
Q: Africa is a vast continent, with many, many stories. But most of what we see on screen has to do with AIDS, or Darfur or the genocide in Rwanda. Do you see this as a problem, a misrepresentation?
A: Remember, there is not one film about Rwanda made by an African director. These are French, or American or Canadian [productions]. There is a big difficulty [with seeing] ourselves in the mirror. And the documentary film is a violent mirror. In Algeria, there are no documentary films — there are no films about people in the street. If a filmmaker were to film his mother cooking, this would be considered a form of pornography. We are not used to it. My films produce a big effect in Algeria, mostly because people never see themselves. So, of course there is this problem [of misrepresentation].
Q: How important is it for Africans to see themselves in regular scenarios on screen? How important is this representation of everyday life?
A: Very, very, very important. Some years ago, I made a film in Algeria about autism. I think people who are autistic do not have a representation of themselves — this is their pathology. And a society without documentary films — whether it’s on the news or in cinema — is the same. When I made the film about autism, I made it about autism in children. But when I was editing it, I had the idea that this was a film about Algeria — about the society I lived in. The government did not like this. It was, of course, banned for two years.
Algeria, Unspoken Stories screens at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 15.
Richard Poplak is a Toronto-based writer.
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