Jean Genet, Notre-Père-des-Fleurs was the last documentary made by Moroccan filmmaker Dalila Ennadre, who died two years ago following a long illness. The film had its international premiere this week in the medium length and short film competition at Visions du Réel.
Ennadre regarded French author Genet (1910-1986) as a kindred spirit. Genet always stood up for those on the margins of society – vagabonds, thieves, the disenfranchised or anyone persecuted because of their race or sexuality. He is buried in a cemetery in the coastal town Larache in Morocco – and that is where Ennadre starts her documentary.
The local people in the seaside town regard Genet (the author of such classic novels and plays as ‘Querelle’, ‘Our Lady Of The Flowers’ and ‘The Maids’) with affection, as one of their own. A few remember him in person. They describe how he used to come to the cemetery, “open a book and turn to the sea.” Many thought he was Moroccan.
The others may not have read his books but whether they are kids, fishermen or even convicts, they see him as an inspirational figure – someone to be cherished. They put flowers on his grave, carefully tending his burial plot.
Critic and curator Nadia Meflah first met Ennadre 12 years ago when she programmed several of the director’s films and quickly struck up a close bond with her.
Ennadre called Meflah six months before her death to ask for assistance completing the Jean Genet film which by then was in post-production. “We had to write many files to find funding…she succeeded in finishing this film but it was very hard.”
Meflah describes the filmmaker’s death as “a huge loss not only for Morocco but for cinema.” Her contribution, though, remains undervalued. In Morocco itself, there has been little acknowledgement of her passing or of the importance of her work.
Genet’s story, Meflah believes, was very similar to that of Ennadre. “Dalila was a warrior, wild but with the highest kindness and tenderness,” she says of the filmmaker. “She chose not to create an exotic picture of Morocco. She was against that…the private lives of Dalila and Jean Genet are so connected [in] loneliness and suffering.”
Like Genet, Ennadre took the side of those neglected by society. Like Genet, she would never compromise. She didn’t grow rich through her work. Prior to her death, she had been living a precarious existence in an old flat in Paris. “She came back to Morocco, she found light. I think she died in peace.”
In her films like El Batalett, Femmes de la médina (2001), about the lives of a group women in the old city of Casablanca, or J’ai tant aimé…(2008), about a Moroccan prostitute employed by the French colonial army, Ennadre (who was a self-taught filmmaker) probed away at raw and uncomfortable aspects of Moroccan life that no other filmmakers went near.
“Morocco is very brutal. It’s a society surrounded by poverty and social injustice,” Meflah suggests. “It’s a scandal.” She talks of the thousands of kids who can’t even afford shoes and of the women forced into prostitution. “This reality is rarely in Moroccan movies.”
Meflah is the author of a book about Charlie Chaplin (‘Chaplin Et Les Femmes’) and sees similarities between Ennadre’s work and that of the great screen comedian, the little tramp likewise stood up for the downtrodden.
Jean Genet, Notre-Père-des-Fleur has been screening on the festival circuit. It was produced through La Prod and Laya Productions and also received support from the Doha Film Institute. It was produced by Lamia Chraibi tog
ether with Dalila and Lilya Ennadre.
Before her death, the director made a statement about her film and about what Genet meant to her.
“This portrait of Jean to me, of Jean to the people in which everyone can build their own portrait, is deeply tied to the intimate and universal question raised by the film: what do we do with our pain? How can we take advantage of the one that lives in each of us? It is a film nourished by compassion where the cinema brings us together through the story, to continue to live upright,” Ennadre declared.
