New day at the Mostra de València and, in front of the stalls, we met the Tunisian director Selma Baccar, old acquaintance from the contest who came to present her latest production after many years. El Jaida takes us to the beginning of the fifties of the last century. In a country with a strong religious presence in institutions, Four women must face a change in the normal course of their lives. For one reason or another, and protected by law, Their husbands have decided to lock them up in something like a kind of residence for “wayward” women called Dar Joued.. There they must remain without leaving or communicating with anyone other than themselves and the despotic guardian of this singular institution until they reflect or amend their behavior., contrary to Koranic law and the wishes or interests of their husbands. Thus begins an inner journey of individual and collective improvement.. All of this, framed within a crucial moment for his country, Tunisia, which is immersed in various revolts for its independence as a protectorate of France. In the fight for the freedom of the Tunisian people there is also the fight of these women to recover equality. It will not be enough to achieve independence from the European colonial power, It will also be the fight against the oppressive dominance of religion in a future secular state that guarantees the well-being of all its citizens..
Selma Baccar wrote the script for El jaida In the year 2006, upon finishing his previous feature film, Khochkhach. Their involvement and political commitment in the reform in 2011 of the Constitution of his country after the fall of the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, They kept her away from the cameras. A reform that, just as the director herself said and is reflected in the film, It encountered a lot of resistance from religious establishments and parties to maintain its secular spirit.. After this intense political work, back to his activity as a filmmaker, Baccar took up this story. This parliamentary and constituent work, however, had changed his focus, as he told us in the presentation session before the press and the public. “After this political commitment I could no longer make this film in the same way because my vision had changed.. So I decided to return to the structure to understand how religion could find any pretext to condemn women.. From there, the characters of the judge emerged, of the little girl, who is the daughter of the protagonist, 50 years later [at the end of the tape], she becomes a deputy and we see her smile against the background of the Tunisian national anthem. The smile is due to the satisfaction of having fulfilled the duty of avenging his mother and all the women who had suffered all these misfortunes..
The construction of the story on which the film is based was not a well-trodden path for the director.. Among the greatest difficulties she had was the lack of first-hand information that would allow her to reconstruct the intimate life of this confinement house for women that she describes.. “At first I did not find any text that talked about this organism, just a small book written by two university students, but he didn't tell any anecdote. Because? Well, because in families it has remained a shame., no one wants to remember that once a mother, a grandmother or aunt spent time in this place. It is part of the forgotten memory of society. I wanted to include anecdotes, but, as it was very frowned upon, “Nobody wanted to answer.”. The coincidence, however, They came to fill this gap. A chance conversation with a film technician put her on the trail of a personal testimony. It was the missing piece.. “When I told him the case, he told me that his grandmother, that I had 100 years, He spent six months in that place. This is the greatest luck I have ever had in my life because thanks to this woman I was able to rebuild my daily life., the things that happened there, the story of the basement, the room reserved for women to receive their husbands, the possibility of paying so that a well-off girl or a woman with a higher purchasing power could have that room for herself”.
But if El Jaida It is a film that aspires to be relevant because of the reflection that the life of humiliations that these women suffered in the past has today.. an image, bare feet that walk cautiously in the night, concentrates the metaphor of your message. “If there is one thing that unites them all, it is those steps of bare feet that we see at the beginning of the film. Women have in common this fact of always walking towards their destination with very doubtful steps.. They are fragile women when it comes to making decisions.. I wanted to create this contrast with the steps of the female representative that appear at the end, with her heels and with those sure steps. Within the context of research I have spoken with many women today and what many of them have told me is that they are experiencing this confinement within their own homes.”.
According to the director herself, the film was a notable success, so much so that it was his first film to make a profit.. We can find the key, on the one hand, in the use of television actors well known to the Tunisian public, something unusual in the cinema of his country. The other leg is found in a youth eager for answers about their past and possible future.. “The film was very successful among women, between certain men and, above all, among the young, which surprised me a lot”, commented the director. “Currently, Tunisian youth is in a situation of disorientation, the young are lost, there is a lot of anger, They are in a process of quite distressing identity search. They don't see the future very clearly. I found it surprising that a film based on women in the past could interest a young audience. And I think this is because young people have understood the message, that is to say, What would have happened if the Islamists had regained power? What situation would we have reached?? Would it have been the one we saw in the movie or worse? The Islamist threat does not only affect women, but to a whole state of mind of a society that sees everything they have achieved in all these years in danger”.
The premiere of the film and its passage through festivals has not been without controversy, even among those who, at first, They are ideologically close to the positions of Selma Baccar. One of the reasons is found in the film's tribute to President Habib Burguiba., key architect of his country's independence, but whose subsequent mandates are riddled with contradictions. “The majority of the population feels grateful to Burguiba for what he has given them.”, for having democratized the country, for having given them something resembling equality. He's what I call an enlightened dictator. He imposed compulsory schooling, abolished polygamy and, although he made some mistakes, some rights were also achieved. There were also people who suffered during Burguiba's time and have never forgiven him.. myself in 1975 “I shot a film that was censored for thirty years because it said something contrary to Burguiba's official speech.”. For all this, some have accused her of flirting with him now, to be bourguibista. "Well no, because when he was alive I didn't flirt with him, but quite the opposite, even risking going to jail. But 15 “Years after her death I feel like a grateful granddaughter for everything she did with Tunisian society.”.
After many years of social demands, There are still many things to change in your society. “Woman is not equal to man completely because, For example, inherits only half of what the brother inherits. Now there is a lot of controversy to ensure that the parts are equal for men and women, but the Islamists oppose it because they say that the Quran clearly says that the woman should inherit half of the man's share. And the excuse that those who oppose are giving is that “not even Burguiba could achieve this.”. The debate now is to say that Bourguiba has already passed and that we can do it.”.
The last words of his speech refer to what became known as the Arab Spring., for Baccar one of the greatest euphemisms in history. “It was simply a people who wanted to demonstrate for their freedoms for their dignity so that young people could have a decent life.”. All of this has been misinterpreted in political terms to boil down to the question of who is more Muslim., you or me. Are you Muslim at 100%, al 50%, al 20%? And well, This gave rise to political assassinations and the arrival of radicalism from various areas of the Middle East., with it came terrorism, “First with ideas and then with weapons.”. For Selma Baccar there is no moderate Islam. “From the moment Islam takes root in politics, it tries to impose a model of life that is not what the majority wants and things get annoying.”. The only moderate Islam I recognize is that of my parents, my grandparents that were instilled in them through education, based on intelligence and based on an evolution towards better things. If here in Europe you hear about moderate political Islam, They can laugh in people's faces.". G.LEON
