Nacer Khemir Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Nacer Khemir
Directing
Biography
Nacer Khemir (Arabic: ناصر خمير), born in 1948 in Korba, Tunisia, is a Tunisian writer, artist, storyteller, and filmmaker. Biography From an early age, Khemir was fascinated by classical Arabic culture and by storytelling. He has cited the One Thousand and One Nights as a particular influence, saying, "I am a child of these stories." However, in spite of this interest and a similar, lasting passion for film, Khemir initially planned a career as a painter and sculptor - a path he has, throughout his life, continued to pursue; his art has been exhibited at, among other institutions, the Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. In 1966, at the age of eighteen, he was awarded a UNESCO fellowship to study film in Paris. In 1975, he completed his first film, L’Histoire du pays du Bon Dieu (The History of God's Country), shot in his hometown of Korba and featuring the desert setting and spiritual overtones that would figure prominently in his later work. Released in 1984, his first feature film, Les baliseurs du désert (Wanderers of the Desert), garnered international acclaim. The film, which tells the story of a schoolteacher's arrival in a strange and haunting desert town, was awarded the Grand Prix at the Festival des Trois Continents. Khemir's second feature, Le collier perdu de la colombe (The Dove's Lost Necklace), was released in 1991. The dialogue of the film is in Classical Arabic.[4] Its narrative, reminiscent of a fairy tale, concerns a young calligrapher in Al-Andalus who embarks on a quest to find the missing fragments of a manuscript that he believes will reveal to him the secrets of love. Le collier perdu de la colombe was the recipient of several awards, including a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival. Les baliseurs du désert and Le collier perdu de la colombe are considered to form the first two parts of a "Desert Trilogy." The third part, Bab'Aziz: le prince qui contemplait son âme (Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul) was released in 2005. Bab'Aziz tells the story of an elderly dervish who, accompanied by his young granddaughter, encounters several mysterious strangers as he journeys to a large and joyful Sufi gathering in the desert. Khemir has described Bab'Aziz as "a highly political film, and deliberately so," saying: "I would explain it with this allegory: if you are walking alongside your father and he suddenly falls down, his face in the mud, what would you do? You would help him stand up, and wipe his face with your shirt. My father’s face stands for Islam, and I tried to wipe Islam’s face clean with my movie, by showing an open, tolerant and friendly Islamic culture, full of love and wisdom . . . an Islam that is different from the one depicted by the media in the aftermath of 9/11." The film was co-produced by eight countries, including Germany, France, Switzerland, and Iran. It was the recipient of a Golden Dagger at the Muscat Film Festival. In addition to his work as an artist and filmmaker, Khemir has performed as a storyteller at the Théâtre national de Chaillot, and has produced work for Swiss, French, and Tunisian television. He is the author of a number of books, including several for children
Filmography Movies
Acting
Wanderers of the Desert
A young teacher arrives to take over a village school isolated in the shimmering desert. Legendary figures materialize out of wells and the desert itself, groups of children hurry through a labyrinth of underground corridors, and the teacher is whisked away to a mysterious rendezvous and never returns.
The Trip To Tunis
Retracing the trip to Tunisia that painter Paul Klee took in 1914, Tunisian filmmaker and painter Nacer Khemir leads viewers on a journey of discovery into Arabian culture.
L'Alphabet de Ma Mère
An old woman is sitting with motionless and two eyes closed. Suddenly, a visitor shows up in the courtyard of the house while she is looking at the sunlight through a window. The turtle and a door open onto her memories and it makes her think of a memory about a rosary. The images of an unforgettable past remain in her mind with longing about her missing son.
Where to Start?
There are around twenty thousand cafés in Tunisia, but barely ten movie theaters. In the past, we Arabs missed out on the printing revolution. I wonder if today we are missing out on the image revolution. This political fiction attempts to respond, even through utopia, to the hope inspired by this new Tunisia in the making.
Looking for Muhyiddin
A man (played by the filmmaker Nacer Khemir) returns home to Tunis to bury his mother. After the burial, his father gives him an "amana" to be handed to a certain Sheikh named Muhyiddin. Taken by his father's request, the man immediately sets out on an epic journey to find the long lost Sheikh and deliver the "amana."
Production
Bab'Aziz
The story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape.
Bab'Aziz
The story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape.
Where to Start?
There are around twenty thousand cafés in Tunisia, but barely ten movie theaters. In the past, we Arabs missed out on the printing revolution. I wonder if today we are missing out on the image revolution. This political fiction attempts to respond, even through utopia, to the hope inspired by this new Tunisia in the making.
Wanderers of the Desert
A young teacher arrives to take over a village school isolated in the shimmering desert. Legendary figures materialize out of wells and the desert itself, groups of children hurry through a labyrinth of underground corridors, and the teacher is whisked away to a mysterious rendezvous and never returns.
Wanderers of the Desert
A young teacher arrives to take over a village school isolated in the shimmering desert. Legendary figures materialize out of wells and the desert itself, groups of children hurry through a labyrinth of underground corridors, and the teacher is whisked away to a mysterious rendezvous and never returns.
The Dove's Lost Necklace
The story revolves around Hassan, who is studying Arabic calligraphy from a grand master. Coming across a manuscript fragment, Hassan searches for the missing pieces, believing that once he finds them, he will learn the secrets of love.
The Dove's Lost Necklace
The story revolves around Hassan, who is studying Arabic calligraphy from a grand master. Coming across a manuscript fragment, Hassan searches for the missing pieces, believing that once he finds them, he will learn the secrets of love.
Loving Wallada
Wallada, the only child of one of the last Umayyad caliphs, al-Mustakfi murdered in 1025, asserted herself throughout the 11th century as both a poetess and a free woman. The first European woman to hold a literary salon, she surrounded herself with the artistic and the cultured elite of Cordoba of the time. The film is both the portrait of this century, with its contrasts that saw both Ibn Hazm, author of ‘Tawk al-Hamama’, a manuscript on love and lovers, and the rise of the Andalusian poetry and chant, passing through the influence of Ziryab’s school on music, fashion, fragrance and the formation of a refined elite that eventually spread all over al-Andalus and beyond. The film also tells Wallada and the great poet Ibn Zaydun’s unhappy love story, while evocating the civil war and the fall of the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus.
Yasmina et les 60 noms de l’amour
“In 1992 I bought a small mini-DV camera to film my diary and fix my memories, which have become “transparent” due to my nomadic life. When I returned to my village, I learned that an attempt had been made to poison my great aunt Yasmina. I went to visit her and that's how I started this movie without knowing it. Very quickly I was caught up in Yasmina's oral novel and its great secret. I was working at the time, in Europe, on my exhibition "The 60 Names of Love". My life was divided between two exiles, here and there, between the Gregorian calendar and the Hegira calendar, between the drama of Yasmina and my journey to the heart of the Arabic language and The 60 Names of love.” Nacer Khemir
André Miquel. An encounter with the Arabic language
This is a film about a man, with a peculiar itinirary, who worked hard to build a bridge between the Arab and the French cultures. A kind of testimony, alternating narration and conversations where the evocation of oneself becomes a curiosity of the other. There are men, whom by their achivements, bring shorelines closer to each other, Andé Miquel is one of them. The film tells why and how a young man from the Languedoc region in France, dreams one day of the other shore of the mediteriranean sea and is passionately interested in the language and Arab cultures to the point that it becomes a total vocation. Sometimes an encounter, a hazard, proves to be irreplaceable, indispensable and finally a destiny.
Gallery
