Nouba (2000)

Nouba plays on the aesthetics of video clips and evokes a remote and exotic reality, further displaced by an unterritorialized music. The word "nouba" is borrowed from Maghrebi Arabic "nuba", which in classical Arabic is sais "nawba" meaning «in turns» or «to succeed each other». This word has integrated the French language through Algeria’s colonial army describing the Algerian infantrymen’s music before shifting again to become a synonym of partying. This title is also a hommage to Assi Djebar’s film La Nouba du Mont-Chenoua (1977), the first algerian feature film made by a female director which key protagonist is an emancipated Algerian woman.