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Al Mahatta (The Station) + 143 Sahara Street (12A*) + Introduction

Screening the Sahara

,Cinema 3
A group of men in white desert dress stand in a desert in front of a donkey.

A screening of Hassen Ferhani’s Algerian documentary showing vignettes in cafés and crossroads in the Sahara screens alongside an experimental short from Sudan.

In the south of Algeria, Hassen Ferhani’s 143 Sahara Street captures a tender portrait of Malika, the owner of a café in the Sahara. Encounters with clients from all walks of life lead to conversations about memories, work patterns and infrastructural development. Observing sandstorms and witnessing the passage of time, Malika is an anchor point for many travellers. Ferhani vividly conveys the tension between the outside and inside worlds.

Filmed in Sudan in the late 1980s, Mahdi’s The Station records the transformative impact of infrastructure, punctuated by close-ups of social interactions. Situated at a major crossroads between the capital Khartoum and Port Sudan on the Red Sea, this restored film encapsulates the poetry of daily life in this space of transit.

Tagged with: Cinema Screening the Sahara

Al Mahatta (The Station), Eltayeb Mahdi, 1989, 17 mins, no dialogue

143 Sahara Street, Hassen Ferhani, 2019, 104 minutes, in Arabic, French and English with English subtitles

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