During the period of African independence, the young Moroccan filmmakers studying at the Łódź Film School, together with their classmates from all over the world, particularly Asia, Africa, and Latin America, reflected on a world and a cinema that was yet to come. What would the role of the artist be in this eagerly awaited reorganisation of the world? What kind of national cinema would they want for their newly independent countries? How would they confront the social and political realities they found there?

In Poland, these filmmakers shared years of political activism and struggle in exile, and of collective struggles in solidarity with oppressed peoples. They learned the Polish language and culture, watched films from around the world, discovered new artistic milieux, including free jazz, conceptual art and radical political cinema. They were years of friendships, love stories, studies, but also encounters with the margins and the political and social realities of communist Poland.

Abdelkrim Derkaoui, who studied cinematography in Łódź, extensively documented this “Polish life”. His photographs, preserved in negative albums and stored in boxes since his return to Morocco in 1972, have never before been shown. They are now brought into dialogue with the films made during the years of study in Łódź, and with documents and objects gathered from several countries including Morocco, Poland, Costa Rica, and Cuba, from both private and institutional archives, as well as from booksellers. Seen together, they reconstruct the international political and artistic atmosphere of those Polish years, which were marked by tri-continental struggle.

A project by Léa Morin

2.

Everyday Exile

2. In the mid-1960s, they left Morocco for communist Poland. Upon their arrival, the Moroccan students, who have come to learn cinema, discover the realities of Polish society.

3.

Remember Ben Barka

3. The demonstrations of March 1965 in Casablanca marked the political awakening of Moroccan youth. They took to the streets, joined by their parents and the people of Casablanca, filled with hopes for a society they wanted to help change.

4.

Negative Albums

4. The Polish years will leave a lasting mark on the cinema of Moroccan filmmakers who studied in Lodz in the 1960s and 1970s. And with them, a large section of Moroccan filmography.