Shamt al kushur
Tunisia,
1994, 127 min
Shown in 1995
CREDITS
- dir
-
Moufida Tlatli
- prod
-
Ahmed Baha Eddine Attia
- scr
-
Moufida Tlatli
- cam
-
Youssef Ben Youssef
- editor
-
Moufida Tlatli
- cast
-
Amel Hedhili, Hend Sabri, Najia Ouerghi, Ghalia Lacroix
-
COMMENTS
Moufida Tlatli appeared in person to receive the 1995 Satyajit Ray Award.
The lingering legacy of the harem is brought into light, stripped of its mercurial mystery, in this first feature by Tunisian writer/director Moufida Tlatli. News of the death of Prince Sid'Ali brings Alia, a small-time professional singer, back to the palace where she was born into servitude. Deserted courtyards and full closets offer up memories of a girlhood spent trying to decipher the shifting roles of her beautiful mother—now slave, now dancer, now lover—and wondering where her tragic fate would intersect with her own. Tlatli edits her own film with the intimacy of a novel, drawing a complex story from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains, gleaning a narrative out of silences. From the downstairs quarters where servants dish up rebellious innuendo and feminine intimacy, to the masters' confines where lugubrious luxury seems to announce its own demise, Tlatli skillfully makes interior space the whole world. The Silences of the Palace is an interior epic. Outside, the battle of Tunisian nationalists against the French—for independence, for roots, for a future—clearly has parallels, but after the political war is won, women go on to fight alone. Memory will be Alia's weapon against silence.
—Judy Bloch
FACTOID #80
The globetrotting thespian Anthony Quinn attended the 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival in support of the Opening Night film The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he played the half-drunk mayor of an Italian hamlet, protecting his town’s wine collection from German soldiers.
