La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli (The Zerda or the Songs of Oblivion)

As a historian, Assia Djebar had been asked by Pathé-Gaumont to sift through some old film reels, which turned out
to be discarded newsreels on the colonies, focusing on the everyday life of the Maghrebi peoples from the early twentieth century to the Second World War. Out of the colonial discards, Djebar, in collaboration with poet Malek Alloula and composer Ahmed Essyad, wove together footage of the Zerda ceremony with poetic voice-overs recounting the lived experiences of indigenous Algerians, interspersed with “songs of oblivion” to recognize traditions that are being lost to colonialism even as they are tokenized by and subjugated to the colonial gaze.

Digital restoration by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.

With the support of Goethe-Institut Brussels.