The Mother of All Lies review – pursuing the truth of Morocco’s brutal dictatorship years

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Asmae El Moudir employs a delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony to brilliantly evoke personal and collective trauma Between those who refuse to remember and those who struggle to forget, a tumultuous clash of minds occupies the centre of Asmae El Moudir’s inventive documentary, a prize-winner at last year’s Cannes film festival. Through a constellation of clay figurines and dollhouse-style miniature sets, most of which were constructed by El Moudir’s father, the director recreates her oppressive childhood in the Sebata district of Casablanca. Under the watchful eyes of her domineering grandmother Zahra, all personal photos are banished from the house, save for a picture of King Hassan II. The delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony brilliantly evokes the personal and collective trauma that stem from Morocco’s “Years of Lead” – a period of state brutality under Hassan II’s dictatorial rule. Lingering on the nimble fingers of El Moudir’s father as he puts t
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Fragments of Paradise review – moving account of legendary radical Jonas Mekas

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KD Davison’s hagiography of the ‘godfather of American avant garde cinema’ says much about his profound influence, but glosses over uncomfortable details about his early life

Hailed as “the godfather of American avant garde cinema”, Jonas Mekas led an extraordinary, multi-hyphenated career whose wide-ranging influence must have proved a challenge for a documentary to encompass. When Mekas arrived in New York as a Lithuanian exile in 1949, the first thing he bought was a Bolex camera. For the displaced immigrant, when language faltered images became a means of communication.

As Fragments of Paradise charts Mekas’s professional milestones – a critic, a film-maker, a curator, and so on – what emerges most movingly is his philosophy of creative togetherness. In founding Film Culture magazine, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and later on the Anthology Film Archives, Mekas succeeded in building a nurturing space for those forgotten by the mainstream. It’s the kind of community-oriented work reflecting the belief that, for him, the home is the cinema.

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