Beyond Casablanca: M. A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema

Introduction: Third World, Many Worlds

Introduction Third World, Many Worlds Filmmaker in the (Third) World A Third World filmmaker may smile wryly upon hearing the stock phrases “cinema is both an art and an industry” and “a film is both a creative product and a commodity.” He (or in rare cases she) might retort, “How can our cinema be considered an industry , our films commodities, when production financing usually comes from state and international aid; when the film has little chance of reaching the marketplace and, even if it does, theaters are so few and audiences so limited and impoverished that costs cannot be recovered let alone profit be made; when, however successful your film may be, you have no assurance that you’ll ever again have the means to make another?” Perhaps the only ways in which Third World cinema resembles an industry are that making a film requires substantial capital outlay and that the filmmaking sector is inevitably inserted, as it has been from its beginnings, into the many-tiered, multi-faceted global complex of creation, communication, and consumption.1 Whatever its particular difficulties, Third World filmmaking over the past few decades has given birth to a significant number of important artists and individual works that have gained national and international recognition.2 Yet, flanking these filmmakers there are many others deserving recognition beyond their national borders (and greater recognition within them) but who, for reasons having little or nothing to do with the quality of the work, have not received it. 2 Beyond Casablanca Making a film anywhere in the world illustrates the tension between creative élan and economic constraints, and this is worked out in particular political and cultural contexts, filtered through the lens of individual filmmakers and expressed in their unique films. In this book we are going to try to follow this process on three different but interrelated levels by exploring, more or less simultaneously, the birth and development of one Third World national cinema (Morocco’s), the unfolding of a particularly rich career within it (Muhammad Abderrahman Tazi’s), and the first four feature films Tazi has made. My aims, among many others, are not only to improve our capacity to assess Tazi’s achievements and those of the national cinema of which he is a part but also to furnish some insight into the situation of Third World creative artists—in this case filmmakers—working in the context of a global culture industry. Perhaps too, this book will help us appreciate the many different worlds—social, cultural, psychological, domestic, regional, international (one could go on)—that seemingly local developments carry within them. Glimpsing Tazi’s World: A Hit in Morocco, a Trace in New York Muhammad Abderrahman Tazi’s third film, Looking for My Wife’s Husband, had its premiere in Rabat, Morocco, in late 1993. As the show ended and with the audience’s laughter still ringing in his ears, Tazi was hailed by the head of the Moroccan Film Center, who came over to him and said, “This film is going to be a really big hit.”3 No one, however, could have had any idea just how big a hit it would be, because no Moroccan film before it, nor any since, has approached this success. In the months following its release, Looking for My Wife’s Husband reached close to one million spectators, almost twice as many as its closest rival to this day. In addition, a vast number of pirated videotapes were produced and sold at rock-bottom prices throughout the country. At about the time Tazi’s Looking for My Wife’s Husband was breaking records in Morocco I was visiting New York City, where I had been born and raised. As a social anthropologist working on the Middle East and North Africa and specializing in Morocco (where I had done several years of fieldwork), I was intrigued to find a Moroccan film being shown at a festival at the Museum of Modern Art—an extremely rare Introduction 3 occurrence in any New York venue. I had no professional interest in films but I looked forward to seeing this one, called Badis, directed by a certain Muhammad Abderrahman Tazi. As the film unfolded, tensions grew taut and the plot seemed to be moving inexorably to a climax. I was riveted and thought to myself, “What a pleasure to be in the grip of a real...