Ahmed Boulane
by Sherif Awad
Cinema in Morocco has started one year after its start in
Egypt, specifically in 1897, when Louis Lumière shot one of the first films ever
entitled The Moroccan Goatherd. Since that date, many international
films went to shoot across Morocco, especially in Ouarzazate area. Also, many
Moroccans worked in these largescale productions as actors, location managers
and assistant directors with the visiting film crews coming from all over the
world.
Writer-director Ahmed Boulane one of those Moroccans.
Nicknamed L’enfant terrible du cinéma marrocain (i.e. The unruly child
of Moroccan cinema) for his rebellious character, he gradually but firmly
walked the artistic line to become one of the most renowned filmmakers on the
Arab and international scene. Boulane’s luck stroke twice as his film practice
was supported by his significant other, the American-born and Moroccan-based costume
designer Dana Schondelmeyer.
Since his early childhood, Boulane started to fall in love
with cinema. While at home, Boulane tried to create a handmade camera to film
his mother on Fridays. His father, who favored American films, took him to see classics
like Moby Dick. As lot of American WWII films were playing in cinema at
that time of the 1960s, ironically enough, there an American military base 50
Km away of his home city Salé that was the home of many Moroccan officials and
intellectuals.
“I was a very rebellious pupil. So, once I finished my
primary school years, my father sent him to learn a handicraft”, remembered
Boulane who became a kid tailor. “Five years later, I started to write and
illustrate my own stories by designing them like a comic book with storyboards
inside and a cover on the outside. When I reached the age of twelve, while
studying music at the Conservatoire of Rabat, I was cast in kiddie roles on
Moroccan television, becoming the youngest actor of TV serials at that time”.
Boulane could have excelled in his carrier as an actor but
at a certain stage, he felt that he needed to do something else. “Once I got my
first passport, I decided to fly to Rome in 1979. I was getting older and no
cute boy roles were offered to me anymore. Yet, I needed to work to make a
living”, explained Boulane who switched career by venturing into casting
direction and location management on international films.
Dana Schondelmeyer who was born in Independence City,
Missouri never explored her artistic side until a later stage of her life. She
studied social science with a phycology major then became an English teacher at
the States. “After meeting some Iranian students in Miami, I was fascinated to
go and work in Teheran”, remembers Dana. “However, the Islamic Revolution broke
out in 1979 which made me return to the US to finish my degree before moving to
Spain then settling down in Morocco. It was in the early 1980s”.
Boulane and Dana met in Morocco while they were married to
others. “Boulane was noisy and liked to make bad jokes about Americans”,
laughed Dana who was at that time married to Moroccan producer Ahmed Abounouo,
the head of Dune Films that supervised the lensing of many international films
across Morocco. “I was teaching in Morocco yet I was very critical of the
French educational system which is locally adapted in its schools and
universities. And so, bit by bit, I found myself involved in costumes designs of
the films that Dune was working on. It was maybe a fulfillment of wish to
become a cartoonist at a very early age. I started with two women working for
and some years later they become more than forty”.
Boulane and Dana’s first collaboration together came before
they become a couple. “I asked Dana to create the costumes for a Harem scene in
a French-Burkinabe production shooting in Morocco”, says Boulane. “The film was
L'enfant lion (The Lion Kid, 1993) by Patrick Grandperret. Four years
later, Dana landed the costume design role on Kundun by Martin Scorsese.
Several international big productions followed for her and Boulane.
In 2000, Boulane realized his feature debut Ali, Rabiaa and
the Others (2000), a story of the young man Ali (Younes Megri) who went to
prison for twenty years. After his release, he tries to reunite with his lost
love Rabiaa (Hiam Abbass) and his group of friends. “It was a nostalgic look to
my hippie years in Europe and Morocco”, says Boulane who cast Dana in a bit
role. The film was screened in
Alexandria Film Festival for Mediterranean Countries (AMFF) that same year,
winning the Best Supporting Actor Award.
Boulane’s following feature was The Satanic Angels. Released
in 2007, it was based on the true story of the arrest of fourteen young
Moroccan hard rock musicians who were falsely accused of Satanism. Dana
contributed to the film as costume designer for the special outfits of the hard
rockers. In Egypt, similar cases were pursued by the law yet never the Egyptian
cinema tackled it. Hence, the importance of that film.
Before being invited as jury member of the Arab competition
at the 38th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) last November,
Boulane has already finished his latest feature La Isla (The Island)
which, again, dramatized an important subject from our daily headlines. The
plot revolved around a Moroccan soldier called Ibrahim (Abdellah Ferkous) who
is sent to a deserted island off the Mediterranean coast to monitor illegal
immigrants. One day, he meets the Sub-Saharan man Mamadou (Issa Ndiaye) who was
washed up on the beach. Soon, their unlikely friendship triggers a diplomatic and
a military crisis.
“I had a wonderful experience to be jury member along with
Egyptian star Ilham Shahin and Lebanese star Georges Khabbaz”, commented
Boulane who attended the festival with Dana. “It was my first visit to Egypt
after the screening of Ali, Rabiaa and the Others. I remember I wanted
my film to have a bigger prize in Alexandria, given its critical and commercial
success at the time. But I am fine with it right now”.
