Farida Benylazid : A Door to Moroccan Cinema

In French and Moroccan Arabic with English subtitles. Screening followed by a Q&A with Director Farida Benylazid, Florence Martin, and Madeleine Dobie

Please join us for a screening of Moroccan filmmaker Farida Benylazid’s newly-restored 1989 film A Door to the Sky, the first feature film directed by a Moroccan woman. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the director led by film scholar Florence Martin and Columbia Professor Madeleine Dobie.

A Door to the Sky imagines an emigrant’s return to Morocco, where she creates, in her family home, a zaouiya – a site devoted to spiritual study and worship – specifically for women. The film explores themes of exile and return as well as questions of gender and religion, probing the intersections of feminism and Muslim faith.

Farida Benylazid is a pioneering Moroccan film producer, director, journalist and film critic whose career in cinema has spanned close to five decades. Her body of work explores questions of gender and identity in Morocco since independence.

A specialist of Maghrebi women’s cinema, Professor Florence Martin teaches at Goucher College. Her latest book is Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema (Palggrave MacMillan, 2024).

Madeleine Dobie is Professor of French & Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a specialist of Maghrebi literature and culture.

The conversation will be in English with translation for Farida Benylazid.

This event is co-sponsored by Columbia Maison Française, Middle East Institute, Center for Ethnomusicology, Film and Media Studies at School of the Arts.

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