Aziz Chouaki ou le serment des oranges
Lamine Ammar-Khodja
2008 - 59 min - HDV - Couleur - France

Musician, novelist, author, Aziz Chouaki walks in broken lines within the maze of the world. Born in Belfort, a suburb of Algiers, he has been living in France since 1991. The author himself and other people he worked with (Karim Ziad, Christiane Achour, Marie Virolle, Mustapha Benfodil) tell his story which is connected to the contemporary Algerian history. Born in 1951, Chouaki lived the independence of 1962, Boumediene’ socialist regime and its coup d’état, the music and the Algerian underground in the 70’s, the events of October 1988, the growth of Islamism and the Front Islamique du Salut (Algerian party), the exodus in 1991. When drawing his portrait, the film focuses on his convictions as an author and man: the youth and the language. Slum belt, lonely people, and junkie poets, in Algiers, in Paris or elsewhere, are Chouaki’s material. He ventures onto these territories with an ironic, broken and inventive language. Indeed, on the side of official Arabic language, there is the people’s language, Creole of French Arabic Kabyle and more, linguistic creativity of a population. In parallel with the author’s words, there are rappers, youngsters speaking in their own language and exposing their daily life.