Movie review • Transes by Ahmed El Maânouni

 

Izza Genini attends a concert by the group Nass El Ghiwane in Paris At the beginning of the 80s. Fascinated by their performance, this ambassador of Moroccan cinema in France offers her friend director, Ahmed El Maânouni, to make a report on the group. Initially, the project consists of filming some concerts by Nass El Ghiwane. Ahmed El Maânouni then goes to the festival of Carthage (Tunisia) where the group signs a striking spectacle and triggers the fervor of tens of thousands of spectators. Very quickly the project takes another turn: Ahmed El Maânouni sympathizes with the members of the group and follows them in their daily life. For several weeks, the filmmaker shares their rehearsals, their travels, their meetings, their arguments ... From Carthage to Agadir, via Paris or Essaouira, this adventure is full of images intended to convey the essence of this mythical group. With his team of editors (Jean-Claude Bonfanti, Atika Tahiri), Ahmed El Maânouni assembles these images in a documentary film of around 1.5 hours entitled Transes.

Nass El Ghiwane is a group of immense popularity. Admired throughout the Arab world, their members have succeeded in conquering an audience beyond their linguistic frontiers. However, it is difficult to measure the importance of this group from our Western countries. Nicknamed the "Rolling Stones of Africa" ​​by Martin Scorsese, Nass El Ghiwane was founded in 1974 by young artists from an underprivileged district of Casablanca. Laarbi Batma, Omar Sayed, Boujmîa Hagour, Mahmoud Saadi, Allal Yaâla and Aziz Tahiri (later replaced by Abderhmane Paco) unite to create a modern musical movement in reaction to the love songs then fashionable in the Arab world. They draw their inspiration from traditional music Aïta, Hmadcha, Jilala but especially Gnaoua to which they associate texts in phase with the concerns of the youth. The power of their instruments and their rhythms provokes a true communion with the public. An audience that sometimes enters a secondary state, the trance ...

Originally, this trance was sought by Gnaoua musicians for therapeutic purposes. Thanks to this ritual, close to voodoo, the followers thought they were free from evil. Nass El Ghiwane returns to these ancestral traditions of Morocco while injecting them with a socially engaged message intended to respond to the fears and unease of Moroccan youth and more broadly that of the Arab world. The documentary remarkably illustrates the rite of trance during the recording of concerts. In a fairly classic way, Ahmed El Maânouni films the group on stage and the reactions of the crowd. But instead of focusing on the dexterity with which artists master their instruments, the filmmaker is more interested in their faces and expressions. It thus shows to what extent these four musicians are invested in their work. Concentrated gazes, tense muscles, permanent sweating are all proof of the passion that inhabits them. Their performance is comparable to that of a gospel. A soul unites them and gives shape to their music. Ahmed El Maânouni never seeks visual embarrassment. His shots are long and the performance of Nass El Ghiwane is more than enough to give substance to the images. Trance is already present in their performance.

The public enters into communion with the group by repeating the words of the songs, but also by dancing. Nothing out of the ordinary so far, but the tension is gradually building in the ranks. Behind the group, we can see the police watching the spectators and worrying about their reactions. Sometimes the uniformed guards intervene because many people want to go on stage. During a concert, a young man manages to outsmart the police and hug Laarbi Batma. In another concert, given in Paris (at La Mutualité), the public is on the stage. A young woman then begins a dance with her eyes closed and ends up collapsing from exhaustion. Ahmed El Maânouni films her in very close-ups: the dancer's movements create an imbalance, cause dizziness. In this shot, the filmmaker suddenly slows down and the film becomes silent. There is nothing more than dancing to this shot. The trance is there, in this discharge of emotions and letting go.

Ahmed El Maânouni also shows this trance during sequences in Essaouira where the group plays in the street. This time, an old woman whose body is completely covered in a veil begins to dance, to turn and then also ends up collapsing in a form of ecstasy. In the following shot we see a man with a knife in his hand, totally inhabited by the music. Then the camera moves back and frames a slaughtered sheep at his feet. The trance then takes the form of a sacrifice and joins the voodoo rite ... Finally, thanks to a montage alternating concert scenes and archive images, the director shows how much this trance is linked to the culture of his country. . These images filmed in black and white come from the funeral of Mohamed V (1961). We then see women and men let themselves be carried away by their sadness and their despair, screaming and gesticulating until the most total exhaustion.

But beyond these captivating images, Transes also follows the life of the musicians of the group. In 1981, they were down to four (Boujmîa Hagour had died). The trust established with the director allows them to let go of their thoughts freely. Ahmed El Maânouni films scenes of rehearsal, creation, but also travel. Sometimes his film lacks coherence: it goes from one sequence to another without a real common thread, offering us a few moments captured alongside Nass El Ghiwane. While the whole may seem disparate, it is nevertheless evocative. For example, he shows the simplicity of the members of the group: despite their immense fame, they have remained humble, close to the people and faithful to their origins. Their friendship is also touching and humor takes an important place in their relationships. They draw their inspiration from the daily life of Moroccan neighborhoods. Transes then takes the form of a documentary on the daily life of Moroccans. This testimony is one of the strengths of the film. Ahmed El Maânouni often illustrates his interviews with maps of the city: a man is preparing bread, clothes are drying in the street, a fisherman comes back painfully from the sea aboard his frail boat ... Here, we are far from the postcard of the Morocco. The filmmaker takes us on the roads of his country and gives us the opportunity to feel the tremendous vitality of its inhabitants.

Transes invites the spectator to share the daily life of an extraordinary musical formation, to be passionate about the rite of trance and to stroll through the streets of Morocco. If its disjointed editing can be disturbing during a first viewing, its images, sounds and the fascinating music of Nass El Ghiwane remain etched in the memory of the viewer. Trances is an unforgettable experience ...