Author - illustrator, Paris/Alger - Director's guest
Octobre à décembre 2012
Slim entered the Institute of Cinema and Television (Ben Aknoun, Algiers) in September 1964 and he did his internship at the Studio Filmów Rysunkowych in the animated film in 1966. He has since made animated films for Algerian television, commercials in Prague (Czechoslovakia): Bouzid et la supéramine and an animated film Train, with his characters in Bratislava. Slim is also a cartoonist and comic book writer in the daily press and in albums (fifteen albums available) and poster designer for several films in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. He has worked and continues to work with several newspapers and magazines in the Maghreb as well as in France, including Charlie Hebdo, Le Monde, L'Humanité, Algier-Info. Four albums of his drawings have been published in France and two collections of cartoons are currently in preparation.
Through a graphic narration, Slim wants to address the phenomenon of the "Arab Spring": the problematic, the selection of the concerned countries, and the results obtained in order to generate a debate. In his project of making a comic book about fifty pages, he situates his history in the post "Arab Spring". That is to say, when the people, after the euphoria of the first few months of "revolution", realize that change does not resemble exactly what they expected and that, ultimately, they would prefer to return back to their previous conditions as unsatisfactory as they were.
We are in an imaginary country of the Maghreb, which previously had a military dictatorship and now is experiencing a religious dictatorship. Oued Besbes is a small village, and will be the place where the story starts; this is where the positive characters (young indignant) will evolve. They do not have much to help them organize now that there is neither Internet nor social networks such as before or satellite TV, no radio, no nothing. Worse, they must go to the village mosque five times a day and must "point" (because there is an official time-clock) to avoid problems in case of non-attendance. On a strictly graphic point of view, this project offers interesting perspectives, for Slim has created a series of characters representing a typical and colorful Maghrebi society, with lots of contradictions, despite its roots in a traditional Muslim culture in opposition to the austerity imported by these fanatics "robots".
Will they succeed? Do they have the means to confront this new enemy? They have no choice anyway and they know it. They will have to be inventive and use stratagems to fight against this new threat and win.
Maybe.