nacer khemir
Nacer Khemir was born in 1948 in Cordoba, Tunisia. Fascinated by the world of tales ever since he was a young boy, today he is a storyteller, writer and director, as well as the author and illustrator of numerous literary works. After being awarded a Unesco scholarship for film studies in Paris, in 1972 he set out to research storytelling in the Arab quarter of Tunis, with the resulting collection of stories serving as the inspiration for his four films about stories and the people who tell them. In 1975 he became part of the storytelling revival in France with his book L’Ogresse (The Giantess). His drawings, sculptures and calligraphy have been exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1980) and the Youth Book Fair in Montreuil. In 1982 and 1988 he spent a month telling stories from the Arabian Nights at the Chaillot National Theatre in Paris. Khemir is a man of the desert, like the teacher he plays in his first film, Les Baliseurs du desert. Sometimes directors try to make films about invisible objects: about the wind (Joris Ivens), or love (Michael Curtiz); Khemir has tried to do this with the desert. The desert, love, the wind have no dimensions. Poor human creatures need things that filmmakers are unable to bring to the screen. Yet Khemir gives us an idea of the desert: it is not a void, it is a place without authority, without nationality, endless. It is not necessary for Jesus Christ to spend forty days praying in the desert.
filmography
2005 Bab’Aziz (The Prince That Contemplated His Soul)
1990 Le Collier Perdu De La Colombe
1985 Les Baliseurs Du Desert
Directors statement
Nacer Khemir was born in 1948 in Cordoba, Tunisia. Fascinated by the world of tales ever since he was a young boy, today he is a storyteller, writer and director, as well as the author and illustrator of numerous literary works. After being awarded a Unesco scholarship for film studies in Paris, in 1972 he set out to research storytelling in the Arab quarter of Tunis, with the resulting collection of stories serving as the inspiration for his four films about stories and the people who tell them. In 1975 he became part of the storytelling revival in France with his book L’Ogresse (The Giantess). His drawings, sculptures and calligraphy have been exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1980) and the Youth Book Fair in Montreuil. In 1982 and 1988 he spent a month telling stories from the Arabian Nights at the Chaillot National Theatre in Paris. Khemir is a man of the desert, like the teacher he plays in his first film, Les Baliseurs du desert. Sometimes directors try to make films about invisible objects: about the wind (Joris Ivens), or love (Michael Curtiz); Khemir has tried to do this with the desert. The desert, love, the wind have no dimensions. Poor human creatures need things that filmmakers are unable to bring to the screen. Yet Khemir gives us an idea of the desert: it is not a void, it is a place without authority, without nationality, endless. It is not necessary for Jesus Christ to spend forty days praying in the desert.
filmography
2005 Bab’Aziz (The Prince That Contemplated His Soul)
1990 Le Collier Perdu De La Colombe
1985 Les Baliseurs Du Desert
Directors statement
