There's a fascinating history to About Some Meaningless Events, as it premiered in the 1970s and then was banned and lost for decades before being found and restored recently. However the film itself ends up a little flat. It is semi-improvised docufiction, but very clearly is artificial in construction. Mostly the film consists of indecision, discussion, and debate, mostly around what makes for meaningful cinema. Rather aptly, the film ends up meaningless. People philosophise and drink and talk, but no single conclusion is reached. Even the finale, which is nominally confrontational, ends without an answer. This is a film which dares to question what cinema should be, and what its social purpose is. One interviewee discusses how films are either…

An intriguing docu-drama that questions the function and form of cinema. The boundary of reality and artifice blurs, as a young filmmaker’s attempts to gauge the public perception of cinema is framed within the contemplations of whether or not cinema that doesn’t tackle real problems end up being bad films manufactured for the bourgeoisie.

Mainly unfolding in the streets and especially in a lively bar in Casablanca, where the ambience is quite something, and conversations between patrons often getting tense and progressing into fistfights. In the midst of these interviews, the camera is often drawn and latches onto the suspecting demeanour of a young man, as if it had a mind of its own and was capable of seeking out…

The film begins by establishing itself as a simple documentary examining Moroccans’ opinions about the state of their own national cinema and about their general taste in films. I would have been satisfied if the film limited itself to these cinema verite style series of conversations with random subjects trying to measure the beat of society’s interest in political/engaged artistic productions. And the film was quite succesful at that.

 And then boom. Fictional elements start sneaking in without one realizing it because, of course, this is still passing itself as a documentary succesfully. Until the fictional conquers the story and creates a rich ambiguity where one genuinely starts wondering what is true and what isn’t, all done in a climactic…

A verité attempt to invent a Moroccan cinema from scratch becomes a jazzy, cacophonous, red wine-fueled journey through the crowded bars around Casablanca’s docks, ultimately wondering what the purpose of cinema even is anyway. “Are you shooting a feature film?” “I couldn’t tell yet.” Wanting to avoid the narcotizing, populist trap of the Egyptian films dominating Arabic cinema at the time, the filmmakers find so many people hungry to see their own lives and problems on the screen; rejecting the cinema they’re fed as so many ways of avoiding reality, that cinema can instead, Kiarostami-like, bring us back to reality, help us discover it in a way we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. “I want a cinema which comes from…

what should it [cinema] talk about?

our problems, our social issues. morocco is full of problems. there's no lucid films about it. or maybe they're too intellectual for regular people. or they say obvious things that everybody knows. but we don't have any films which force us to think about our problems.

"about some meaningless events" starts in form of a documentary asking people on the streets of morocco about their national cinema and what they'd want their movies to be like. most of them feel a disconnection to their national cinema and would like it to be more concerned with working class problems, others don't engage with cinema at all because they don't see any sense in that form…

Qué estúpido es ese lugar común de la carta de amor al cine. Las más de las veces se usa para estereotipar a las películas que hablan sobre sí mismas como un ejercicio romántico entre los cineastas y su medio; sin embargo muchas de esas cartas sugieren, más bien, amargura. Ahí está Sunset Boulevard, de Billy Wlder, y también su posterior parodia, Fedora, que es de plano cruel. Ni hablar de 8 1/2 o Dolor y gloria, que hablan más bien de la incomodidad que provoca una vida dedicada a construir imágenes. About Some Meaningless Events, de Mostafa Derkaoui, se suma a esa amargada tradición con la pregunta de cómo debe ser un cine nacional. Un grupo de cineastas interrumpe…

Part of 30 Countries 2021. Day 19: Morocco

Definitely a film that requires multiple viewings to fully appreciate, for me the immediate thing of note is that this is not technically a "documentary", but it is a production which is not yet meant to be a fictional film either. Immediately constructed as director Mostafa Derkaoui wishing to investigate what Moroccan cinema should be, the film in its very nature spirals off into different directions away from this very quickly.

For starters, a large portion is set within a bar in the Casablanca setting, which was for all the intellectual material on display was actually entertaining in a nearly improvised way. The length conversations and world inside this environment, including all…