Saturday, January 15, 2011

North Afticans living in Francae




If you've read the Aljazeera piece cited in the last blog, you know that Nicolas Sarkozy refused Ben Ali exile in France -- though Sarkozy wanted to extend the courtesy, because of the large number of Tunisians living in France who oppose Ben Ali.

You knew that lots of North Africans live in Franc, from watching world football: most of the French teams are from North Africa.

If you want a feel for what it may be like to be Muslim North Africans living in France, watch two movies I enjoyed a great deal.

One is Three Dancing Slaves -- which is not about slaves or slavery at all, but an extraordinary slice-of-life take about three brothers living in the beauty of the north of France. Three Dancing Slaves is not a gay-themed movie, but it might as well have been; and worth watching in any case.

Here are some images from the movie:




















































The other is Le Gran Voyage: a Muslim father orders his unwilling son to drive him from France to Medina, for his required pilgrimage. An astonishing movie in a lot of ways. Highly recommended.

Here are some images from Le Gran Voyage:




































































Both movies are available from Netflix.


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