Raja Amari

Raja Amari

Raja Amari official photo
Born (1971-04-04) April 4, 1971
Tunis, Tunisia
Nationality Tunisian
Occupation Film director

Raja Amari (born 4 April 1971) is a Tunisian film director[1] and script writer. She is best known for her films Satin rouge/Red satin (2002), and Dowaha/Les secrets/Buried Secrets (2009), both of which have earned international awards and recognition.

Early Life and Education

Born in Tunis, Amari trained in dance at the Conservatoire de Tunis, gaining first prize in dance in 1992.[1] She also studied Italian at the Società Dante D'Alighieri in Tunis and French literature at the University of Tunis, and wrote for the Tunisian film magazine Cinécrits before going to FEMIS in Paris in 1995 [2] to study cinema script writing.[3] She graduated in 1998 and began work on her film portfolio.[3] Her film Satin rouge was screened at la Berlinale 2002. Buried secrets was an official selection at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival.

Career

Film

Satin rouge / Red satin (2002)

Satin rouge follows widowed Tunisian mother Lilia, (Hiam Abbas) as she radically transforms from housewife to cabaret dancer. Her transformation begins when she becomes suspicious of her teenage daughter, Selma (Hend el Fahem) of engaging in a secret relationship with Chokri (Maher Kamoun), a darbouka drummer in Selma's dance class. To find out more, Lilia decides to follow Chokri one day. On her escapade, she follows him into his second workplace: a cabaret club. After overcoming her initial shock, Lilia becomes drawn towards the dancers and drum music. The women are very different from Lilia: they wear colourful clothing, they are showing their midriffs, and they are dancing in a sensual manner to the drumbeat. After befriending the lead dancer, Folla (Monia Hichri), Lilia is convinced to start dancing in the cabaret club. While Lilia begins dancing nightly, she simultaneously begins a romantic relationship with Chokri, whom is still unaware that Lilia is Selma's mother. When Chokri ends his affair with Lilia she is heartbroken. She later finds out it is because Selma has asked Chokri to meet her, and Chokri, realizing his relationship with Selma is getting serious, accepts. The uneasy 'first' meeting Selma organizes between Chokri and Lilia solidifies Lilia's full transformation. When at the start of the film she is seen as a sad, bored and submissive woman who rarely leaves the comforts of home, she is now a dominant matriarchal figure, which is reestablished with Lilia's glance in the mirror at herself prior to Chokri and Selma's arrival.[3]

Typically, in Arab films and Tunisian films you have a woman who is in conflict with the society, and she'll fight against it. I didn't want that. That was not my subject. Lilia, the character played by Haim Abbass, actually finds her freedom in the context of what I call social hypocrisy. She is involved in a society that is hypocritical in the sense that there are two worlds out there: the world of the night and the world of the day. What you do--what you really do--you do not show. She finds a compromise in the sense that society is like that. She just adapts to society. She does what she wants, but she doesn't show it to the world.[4]

-Raja Amari, Indiewire, August 20, 2002

Filmography

Awards and Nominations

Year Award Film Recipient Result Reference
1998 Special Jury Prize at Milano Film Festival Avril/April Raja Amari Won [3]
1998 Special Jury Prize at Tunis Short Films Festival Avril/April Raja Amari Won [3]
1998 Best Cinematography Award at International Short Film Festival, Greece Avril/April Raja Amari Won [3]
2002 New Director's Showcase Award at Seattle International Film Festival Satin rouge/Red satin Raja Amari Won [4]
2002 Best African Film Award at Montreal World Film Festival Satin rouge/Red satin Raja Amari Won [5]
2002 Best Feature Film Award at Torino Film Festival Satin rouge/Red satin Raja Amari Won [6]
2002 Special Mention for William Holden Screenplay Award at Torino Film Festival Satin rouge/Red satin Raja Amari Won [6]

References

  1. 1 2 Rebecca Hillauer (2005). Encyclopedia Of Arab Women Filmmakers. American University in Cairo Press. pp. 370–75. ISBN 978-977-424-943-3. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  2. ↑ Stacey Weber-Feve (28 February 2010). Re-Hybridizing Transnational Domesticity and Femininity: Women's Contemporary Filmmaking and Lifewriting in France, Algeria, and Tunisia. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 104–5. ISBN 978-0-7391-3451-1. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Martine, Florence (2011). Screens and Veils: Maghrebi Women's Cinema. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-253-35668-0.
  4. 1 2 Schultz, Kate (August 20, 2002). "INTERVIEW: Self-Empowerment by Way of the Midriff; Raja Amari’s ‘Satin Rouge’.". Indiewire. Indiewire. Retrieved January 31, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Awards of the Montreal World Film Festival - 2002". Montreal World Film Festival. World Film Festival. 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
  6. 1 2 "Winners of 20th Torino Film Festival". Torino Film Festival. Torino Film Festival. Retrieved February 6, 2016.

External links


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