Abdenour Zahzah

1953, colonized Algeria. Fanon, a young black psychiatrist is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. He was putting his theories of ‘Institutional Psychotherapy’ into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algies School of Psychiatry, while a war broke out in his own wards.

Pierre Clément, student and photographer of René Vauthier, first accompanied him to Tunisia to make a film on the country's independence in 1957. Destiny led him to Algeria and his presence in February 1958 at the Tunisian-Algerian border changed his life. . Forever. He took his camera and photographed the attacks on Sakia Sidi Youssef before committing himself body and soul to the Algerian cause. Shortly after, he directed the film “Algerian Refugees” before being arrested, tortured and imprisoned, while his third film, “The National Liberation Army in Almaki”, was not finished. Abdel Nour Zahzah, a director who commemorates Pierre Clément, the director who risked his life, the brother of the Algerian resistance, who disappeared in 2007.

Gérard Courant's "Filmed Diary" of December 14, 2011, produced in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). Between December 7 and 15, 2011, Gérard Courant was invited by the Dubai International Film Festival, in the United Arab Emirates. It was an opportunity for him to film many "Cinematons" of personalities from the Arab world and to continue his "Film Notebooks" from which he brought back 7 episodes.

Using archive material and present-day accounts, the recalls the life of the Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon. In 1953, at the age of twenty eigh, Fanon was appointed head doctor at the psychiatric hospital in Blida-Joinville, a few kilometres from Algiers. As amedical student in Paris, he had been appalled by the living conditions of the Algerian immigrants and gave over the rest of his brief life to analysing the alienation of the black man, of colonised people and man in general. The forcefulness of his writing - as in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth - and the pertinence of his reasoning still resonate strongly into today's world.

Mokhtar earns his living as a puppeteer, aided by his son. Using his old van, he moves between the few schools scattered in the gloomy countryside.