Brian T. Edwards

Francophone voices of the ‘new’ Morocco in film and print: (re)presenting a society in transition

Francophone voices of the ‘new’ Morocco in film and print: (re)presenting a society in transition, by Valerie K. Orlando, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, xxii and 262 pp., 4 illustrations, ...

Marock in Morocco: Reading Moroccan Films in the Age of Circulation

Abstract This article discusses a number of recent Moroccan films—created by artists based both in Morocco and the diaspora—that engage questions of globalisation and culture. The author argues that ‘circulation’ is a common thematic concern in several such films of the past decade and offers a means by which to understand the relationship of globalisation to recent Maghribi cultural production. The central text analysed is the 2005 film Marock (directed by Laila Marrakchi), and the 2006 controversies surrounding it, which most clearly exhibit the shift in Moroccan representations in the age of global capital and cultural flows. Attention to circulation allows us to put in dialogue the cultural production of the Maghribi diaspora and the Maghrib without collapsing their differences; to identify a new paradigm of cultural production that follows the ‘postcolonial’ period; and to link elements within these films to the material and geopolitical concerns they engage.