The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting

La Zerda and the songs of oblivion 1982 is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar with La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua 1977 Powerful poetic essay based on archives in which Assia Djebar in collaboration with the poet Malek Alloula and the composer Ahmed Essyad deconstructs the French colonial propaganda of the PathéGaumont newsreels from 1912 to 1942 to reveal the signs of revolt among the subjugated North African population Through the reassembly of these propaganda images Djebar recovers the history of the Zerda ceremonies suggesting that the power and mysticism of this tradition were obliterated and erased by the predatory voyeurism of the colonial gaze This very gaze is thus subverted and a hidden tradition of resistance and struggle is revealed against any exoticizing and orientalist temptation