Morocco's magical movie houses
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By Juan Goytisolo author of Cinema Eden: Essays from the Muslim Mediterranean
There exists an almost extinct species of cinema whose auditorium, dense atmosphere and original settings stand out more strongly, more glowingly in the memory
than the meandering plot of their films.
Over the past 30 years, in cities throughout the world, I have come across cinemas like those I knew as a child: the Luxor and Palais Rochechouart in Paris, the Belkis in Aden. In Morocco, there is the Vox in Tangier, the Caruso in Essaouira, and, above all, in Marrakech: the Rif, the Mabrouka, the Mauritania, the Eden.
Numerous legends circulate about the Mabrouka, situated close to the main square of the Djemaa el Fna. Such a mass of youths jostles outside to get into its double-bill of Wild West and kung-fu films that the nimblest and sharpest wits can "swim" the crawl over the heads of their companions en route to the box-office.
According to eyewitnesses, the day a deluge fell on the city and a torrent of water flooded the cinema, the audience didn't budge: they just removed their shoes and crouched on the seats till the flood level reached 20cm, when it was necessary, to a hail of insults and protests, to evacuate the place. The most exaggerated accounts maintain that some people stayed watching the film, with water up to their necks.
The Eden cinema concentrates within its walls all the virtues and attractions of the flea-pits I have mentioned. While the crowd proceeds through the entrance, window-gazers hypnotised by the posters obstruct the traffic, and provoke bad-tempered snarl-ups. The angry tooting of drivers merges with motorcyclists' insults, pedestrians' shouts and the resigned or humorous comments of people living in the neighbourhood.
The whirlwind appearance of street-hawkers with huge plastic sacks of merchandise, adds to the cheerful, ferocious chaos, the daily apotheosis of confusion. In the midst of the tumult, the inquisitive, dreamy-eyed passers-by, cyclists and car-drivers and coachmen linger a few moments on the Eden's cinema posters. But God throws his mantle of mercy over the city, and cases of injury or bruising are miraculously rare.
Sellers of almonds and peanuts, hard-boiled eggs, violently coloured sweets, nougat and loose cigarettes line up by the entrance to the yard. During the interval, however, the doors stay closed and the spectators are jammed against the wrought-iron gate, thrusting their arms between the bars to buy savoury cornets, rolls, a humble Marquise or a lordly, much-coveted, Marlboro. From the outside, the scene of jostling and begging hands inevitably reminds you of a prison.
When the show is over and the movie-goers rush into the street, many spectators, still mesmerised, take a last look at the posters for the films they have just seen, as if to confirm the reality of the fleeting world to which they have been transported and where suddenly they no longer belong.
The programmes in the cinema usually include two films: a Hindi melodrama and a karate film. Sometimes the latter is replaced by a Western and the former by a bland item of soft porn. The nature of what is being projected can be easily guessed from the street: the rat-ata-tat of machine-gun fire and thud of bullets would be enough to raise the dead; the moans of pleasure of an actress in her underwear, up on the screen for public consumption, mingle with the roars of a randy audience; a mellifluous melody reinforced by a piping voice reveals the lonely melancholy of the protagonist of the Hindi film.
The Eden cinema's regulars enjoy flitting from American or Taiwanese violence to the magic and mystery of Indian productions. As locals are aware, the cinema shares the same owner as the Regent in the Europeanised district of Gueliz. A skinny little fellow, of undefinable age, bikes the reels over daily from one place to the other. His punctuality is proverbial, and the films transported from the Regent were shown at the Eden right on schedule.
One day, however, the errand boy didn't arrive: it was later discovered that he had been involved in a traffic accident. But the Hindi film was nowhere to be seen, and gradually impatience led the frustrated spec- tators into choppier waters: shouts, whistles, howls of anger raised the tempo and some youths were already threatening to pull the place apart.
The cinema manager climbed on to the stage and confronted the audience: the Hindi film had been delayed, he said, but he could offer another that would be to their liking - an all-action Western. Unmoved by the offer, the aroused gathering drummed on the wooden backs of their seats to the tune of: "Hindi! Hindi!" Neither promises nor bravado could sooth the serried ranks deprived of their favourite film. After consultations more intricate than any Geneva peace negotiations, the parties involved reached an agreement: everybody present would get a free pass to the film the day after.
* * * In the early 1960s I regularly attended the first releases of karate films.
Every genre engenders its own parody and the parody of karate soon showed its face. Some anarchists, imbued with the festive spirit of May '68, acquired the rights to a Taiwanese film, adapted the sound-track to their own taste and infiltrated the network of local cinemas mainly visited by immigrant workers.
Its title, Dialectic Can Break Stones, was, it seems, an imitation of one of Mao's famous dictums. The pirated plot went something like this: out-and-out war pits two gangs of youths against each other, the bureaucrats against the libertarians. The leader of the latter - we'll call him Ling Pi - goes out alone to fight off 20 of the enemy armed to the teeth. His little sister Miu wants to fight alongside him, but our hero puts a stop to that: "Your mistaken political line won't let you come with me. Stop reading the mind-numbing pair Marx and Lenin and get into the complete works of de Sade!" The girl departs, sobbing her heart, out to take refuge in the family home.
"Why are you crying, Miu?" her father asks anxiously.
"Ling Pi wouldn't let me go with him to liquidate the bureaucrats," she replies. "He says I lack political maturity, and shouldn't waste my time on the Communist classics, I would do better to study de Sade."
The following sequence shows Ling Pi, in full possession of his martial arts skills, karate-chopping his way through the ranks of bureaucrats.
Needless to say, I was delighted by the film. But it also delighted the rest of the spectators who, absorbed in the wondrous action, didn't pay much attention to the sparkling wit of the dialogue. My fondness for Hindi films came later. On my first stays in Marrakech, before I settled down in the neighbourhood around the Djemaa el Fna, I rented a small house in the Kasbah district, whose only cinema still survives and retains the name of Mauritania. It was the enchanted world of films produced in the studios of New Delhi and Bombay, the factory of dreams aimed at an impoverished, semi-illiterate public.
The twists in their plots transported us to the universe of the so-called Byzantine novel, with its kidnappings, disappearances, lonely lovers' ballads and miraculous encounters of characters in the most unlikely places. The songs of the hero or heroine separated by adversity were accompanied by Arabic and French subtitles taking up half the screen but few spectators bothered to follow them. What happens in these films really doesn't require erudite commentaries.
I have to confess that these films interested me and still interest me much more than the usual realistic/psychological productions from Europe and America. Their narrative codes, open to all manner of coincidence and surprise, are quite refreshing after the insipid diet of consumer pap colonising our screens and televisions.
* * * The Eden cinema is an old, down-at-heel flea-pit. There are columns in the middle of the auditorium, obstructing the view of anyone unlucky enough to be seated behind them, forcing them to lean left or right, much to the annoyance of their neighbours.
Peanut husks, though swept up at the end of each show, very soon cover the cement floor and crack when trodden on by people changing seat, coming in or going out. The heavy atmosphere, saturated with tobacco smoke and kef, seems to glue the audience together.
The public here will not tolerate sad endings or the triumph of evil. The cinema's battered old fire-fighting equipment couldn't ever prevent the place being burnt down. Aware of such dangers, and to stave off possible rioting, the management only selects films that end happily.
* * * At 11 o'clock at night, the half-empty streets suddenly become animated. The youngsters leave the cinema en masse, as if on an unruly, warlike demonstr-ation. The hard-boiled egg seller, the stall selling sweets and cakes and the cigarette retailer hurriedly dispatch their merchandise.
A mobile kebab vendor sends up smoke signals a few metres from the cinema and is besieged by ravenous film-goers. The clientele of the Eden scatter in silence to face the harsh realities of their lives, rubbing their eyes as if they have just woken up.
This edited extract comes from 'Cinema Eden: Essays from the Muslim Mediterranean' by Juan Goytisolo. Translated by Peter Bush and published in 2003 by Sickle Moon, an Imprint of Eland www.travelbooks.co.uk.
The Le Rif cinema is at Cité Mohammadi, Daoudiyate, Marrakech. Tel: +212 44-30-31-46 The Mabrouka is at rue Piétonnière, Bab Agnaou, Marrakech. Tel: +212 44-44-24-26 or e-mail contact@mabrouka-marrakech.com
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