Zineb Sedira: “My installation above all celebrates the political, intellectual and artistic solidarity between the three countries”

Nourished by three countries, France, where she was born, Algeria, where her parents come from, and the United Kingdom, where she lives and works, Zineb Sedira has developed since the beginning of her career a polymorphic work, which borrows from autobiography, fiction and documentary.

Interview.

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Miss Figaro.

You are transforming the French Pavilion into a cinematographic installation…

– I went beyond the framework of the Pavilion, of the

to turn it into a film studio.

The space includes four rooms.

In one of them, I show my film

In the others, it is about the decorations created for this work, the objects used.

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What is the theme of the installation?

It's cinema, collaborations between countries.

I chose Italy because the Biennale takes place in Venice (I wink at the Mostra), France because I'm French, and Algeria because I'm Algerian.

In Algeria, in the 1960s, there was a plethora of film productions.

Many were made by Algerians, then the state understood that it was necessary to work with foreign directors.

A movie caught your attention?

(also called

), directed by the Italian Ennio Lorenzini in 1964. The film was released in 1965, it was shown in Algiers, out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, in festivals in Italy, then it disappeared, falls into oblivion.

I found it in the archives, in Rome, and I'm having it restored.

It's an essayist film, in the vein of Jean Rouch or Chris Marker, very politicized, a portrait of a young state, the new post-independence Algeria.

I put excerpts from this film in mine, as well as others from The

Ettore Scola,

Luchino Visconti, and

by Gillo Pontecorvo.

The room where my film will be screened is a mix of the popular cinema of my childhood and that of my art and essay adolescence.

Zineb Sedira

You also recreated the cinema of your childhood in Gennevilliers...

The room where my film will be screened is a mix of the popular cinema of my childhood and that of my arthouse adolescence, with a cutting-edge program that still exists.

Is your installation in line with your memorial work?

Yes, it celebrates above all the political, intellectual and artistic solidarity between the three countries.

This is a time when the directors wanted to work with Algeria because they themselves were anti-colonialists or anti-capitalists.

Algeria was an example, because it had won its freedom through a war.

My film testifies to links and moments of artistic collaboration in the context of the utopias of the 1960s.

Dreams have no title,

from April 23 to November 27, at the French Pavilion of the 59th Venice International Art Biennale.

labiennale.org/en

See also...

This 59th edition of the Venice Biennale is called

in reference to the book by Leonora Carrington, a Mexican novelist and painter of English origin, a figure of surrealism.

The event revolves around three main themes: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses;

the relationship between people and technologies;

the links between bodies and the Earth.

To see in particular, three exhibitions: Anselm Kiefer, at the Doge's Palace, Gian Maria Tosatti, at the Italian Pavilion, Marlene Dumas, at the Palazzo Grassi.