The Algerian Novel (Chapters 1-3)

2016, 2017, 2019; 15’35’, 34’, 45’ video installation

Katia Kameli’s “The Algerian Novel” consists of three video chapters. First chapter is a video thought as an immersion into Algeria’s history, and into the memory of people through a collection of images. It takes place in Larbi Ben M’Hidi street, in Algiers, where Farouk Azzoug and his son own a nomad kiosk where they sell old postcards and reproduction of archival photographs. In chapter 2, French philosopher Marie José Mondzain is reinterpreting “Algerian Novel- chapter 1”. This second chapter is built on the idea of a mise en abyme. The film’s nested structure is a way to keep images and their symbolic load at a distance. It opens a new space of negotiation wherein new associations can be shaped. They function as a starting point for the writing of a history in movement and produce narratives which then become touchstones for a new kind of historicisation. In chapter 3, Marie-José Mondzain explores the meaning of her failed attempts to access iconographies in a national and family novel. The Hirak protests provide a counterpoint to the investigations, allowing for the exploration of hidden memories. Ahmed Bedjaoui analyzes sequences of Assia Djebar’s movie “La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua” and reappropriates history through the lens of women of different generations. The narrative structure becomes more complex in this last part, involving archival images, contemporary analysis, and current events. Thus, actors of the past, present and future are crossing paths, in an Algeria whose changes can be guessed, embodied in particular by the slammer Ibtissem Hattali, who closes the chapter by proclaiming: "Today, the day has come when women will snatch their freedom".