Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema

This book project unfolds and analyzes the work of Moroccan director, producer, and scriptwriter Farida Benlyazid, whose career extends from the beginning of cinema in independent Morocco to the present. This study of her work and career provides a unique perspective on an under-represented cinema, the gender politics of cinema in Morocco, and the contribution of Arab women directors to global cinema and to a gendered understanding of Muslim ethics and aesthetics in film.

A pioneer in Moroccan cinema, Farida Benlyazid has been successful at negotiating the sometimes abrupt turns of Morocco’s rocky 20th century history: from Morocco under French occupation to the advent of Moroccan independence in 1956; the end of the international status of Tangier, her native city, in 1959; the ＂years of lead＂ under the reign of Hassan II; and finally Mohamed VI’s current reign since 1999. As a result, she has a long view of Morocco’s politics of self-representation as well as of the representation of Moroccan women on screen

Florence Martin is Dean John Blackford Van Meter Professor and Professor of French at Goucher College, USA. She is the author of Screens and Veils: Maghrebi Women’s Cinema (2011) and the co-author (with Will Higbee and Jamal Bahmad) of Moroccan Cinema Uncut: Decentred Voices, Transnational Perspectives (2020). She co-edited (with Laura Mason) French Historical Studies: Film, Television and History in the French-speaking World (2023).