Maghreb Noir examines the involvement of North African countries and governments in the liberation struggles throughout the global south in the 1960s and 1970s. The book discusses how the Maghreb countries (specifically, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) served as hubs of revolutionary activities by artists and freedom fighters from the continent of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. For example, the government of Morocco not only welcomed and hosted a number of revolutionary artists for various artistic revolutionary ventures but also provided space, resources, and military training to young freedom fighters at various camps for the purpose of enhancing the freedom struggles in their home countries. There were also interactions and the sharing of revolutionary ideas that took place through literary journal Souffles, which published poems and theoretical and critical works. Likewise, the government of Algeria welcomed many black artists from America and the Caribbean to stay in Algiers, hence enabling them to escape from white supremacist and racist practices in their countries. These artists were also enabled to attend the famous Pan-African Festival of Algiers (PANAF) and interact with many other people including artists from other parts of Africa at symposiums, concert halls, cafes, and art galleries. Tunisia, for its part, hosted a number of African artists including filmmakers and poets, and enabled them to participate in the government-sponsored film festival named Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage (JCC). The book tells us that the motivations for the Maghreb governments to support the revolutionary artistic ventures such as film festivals, literary journals, and Pan-African symposiums were not primarily cultural/artistic reasons but political ones. The Maghreb politicians conceived of these acts as ways of “restoring the image of independence leaders, of the war of independence, of showcasing the courage of [the] leaders who had participated in the liberation struggles” (123). Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik goes on to argue that “And so, in the hopes of creating blockbusters glorifying the Tunisian, Moroccan, and Algerian independence struggles, Maghreb politicians began to invest in building movie theatres, circulating cinema minibuses, funding festivals, and nationalizing the Maghreb screens” (123–24). The author also praises the commitment shown by the artists themselves to the liberation course and ideal such that even when funding was inadequate or not forthcoming they would still find ways to make art. As she writes: “More often than not, however, despite the lack of money and infrastructure, young African filmmakers made do with what they had at hand, in the process of creating cult classics” (125).
The book provides close-up descriptions of the lives and experiences of individual Pan-Africanist filmmakers, poets, journal editors, or festival organizers from the Americas, Caribbean, and other African countries. Maghreb Noir describes their day-to-day encounters, interactions, bonding, and even love affairs with the local populations in these countries. The author shows how questions of race, gender, and national identities were complicatedly interconnected with the Pan-African revolutionary ideas and practices. At times, because of contradicting goals, Tolan-Szkilnik points out, the literary journal Souffles, which had become “the hub for dissident Pan-African thought,” was in disagreement with the Moroccan government authorities. For this reason, “Souffles turned to Africa and the Black Diaspora for support in their fight against neocolonialism, French and American imperialism, and their own government’s oppressive behavior” (42). Hence, the journal was inspired by the revolutionary ideas of intellectuals such as Amirca Cabral and Agostinho Neto, and it benefited from and was enriched by the thought of Frantz Fanon.
Maghreb Noir is an important book for anyone interested in understanding the involvement and contribution of the Maghreb countries in the independence struggles of Africa as well as the contribution of the revolutionary artists to the anti-imperial struggles across the global south. This is a book one should turn to for understanding the role of film festivals, Pan-African art festivals, and revolutionary literary journal Souffles in generating and spreading ideas against colonialism, imperialism, and racism.
Another significance of the Maghreb Noir is its effort to offer a critique of the marginalization of the Maghreb countries from the historiographies of African struggles for independence. The work of the revolutionary artists discussed in this book and that of the Maghreb governments who welcomed, accommodated these artists, and organized or supported their artworks and events challenged the conventional and restrictive racial, national, and linguistic categories and boundaries that separate the Maghreb from the rest of Africa. Tolan-Szkilnik writes: “the Maghreb is now, and has always been, a hub for people from Africa. Writing the history of the Maghreb’s Africanity is essential to understanding contemporary Maghreb and the present-day political demands of Black North African together with the thousands of Black migrants in Algiers, Tangier, and Tunis today” (151).
