Just after few days from the end of a Jazz Festival, the city of El Kef hosted one of the most important artistic event of the country, the “24-hours theatre non-stop”. The event took place in the frame of a theatre festival which lasted from the 23rd to the 28th of March, and which included, a part from theatre and music spectacles, seminars and workshop on dramatic arts.
Rhyme is no crime, photographer Emeric Fohlen’s exposition currently on view at the Institut Francais, offers the public a technicolor glimpse into “a censored culture,” Tunisia’s hip hop movement.
The National Museum of the State Security System is one of several artistic works that Egyptian playwright-director Laila Soliman and Belgian actor-director Ruud Gielens have created together. The artists were approached by the organizers of Dream City to create a project for the fifth edition of the event (November 4-8). Soliman shared some time with Nawaat to talk about the creative process behind their creation, a glimpse into the unofficial narrative of the state security apparatus that operated under the Ben Ali regime.
In a political context where cultural expression is stifled as security measures are intensified, going out to see a movie becomes an act of resistance.
Everybody knows that post-revolutionary Tunisian underground hiphop is cool. Until I got my bars together for the song that will ignite my status as a bonafide citizen of Bizerte’s North side Rapdom, I was set on doing the next coolest thing which is write about underground rap for Nawaat.
Every other November, the Medina in Tunis is transformed into Dream City. In preparation for this year’s edition November 4 – 8, artists and residents have collaborated over the past several months to infuse the public space with contemporary art.
In spite of censorship by mainstream media, the impassioned rap of Klay BBJ has stirred the enthusiasm of youth far beyond working-class neighborhoods and provoked the animosity of law enforcement officials. Upon the release of «وقتاش» («When?») in January 2012, the Union of Customs Agents filed a complaint against Klay BBJ and Hamzaoui Med Amine. His mother claims that while the rapper was performing in Morocco in February 2013, two men came to her home in the hopes that she might convince her son to stop writing political songs.
In a rather low-key, overlooked way, the Tunisian Minister of Culture, Mourad Sakli, has announced yesterday on a radio program on Jawhara FM that the ministry plans on privatizing Tunisian heritage sites. The plan is to have private companies lease the sites for periods of 25 to 30 years.
Two themes that prevail in blogs, reports, news articles, and interviews about art and artists in Tunisia are the gap between politics and people, especially youth, and the criminalization and marginalization of art and artists that has continued after the revolution.
To express one’s self, to voice one’s worries, one’s aspirations and one’s thoughts is an utterly human right. It is not a privilege to openly and fiercely say what one believes and what one dreams. The youth today, in our Tunisia, overflow with powerful emotions, to use the phrasing of the English poet Wordsworth.
On the 2nd day of the Human Screen International Film Festival in Tunis, “le Mondiale” movie house exhibited yesterday “Forbidden voices”, a film which was released in 2012 and which was winner of the Amnesty International Award and the Swiss Film Festival Award as “Best Documentary”. The film narrates the story of three young and courageous female bloggers, from three different countries, who made a revolution from behind a laptop.
On 28 August, having been summoned by the examining magistrate, Nadia Jelassi finds herself in a room at the Palais de Justice being treated like any other criminal. Given orders to “stand up, turn right, turn left”, she is then measured and forced to undergo a physical examination.
Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis, usually a stage for protests and police crackdown, turned into an open library in the afternoon of 18 April. Armed with their books, adults, teenagers, children, men and women from different social classes occupied the avenue to take part in “the Avenue Reads”.
Anis Mrabti, (aka Volcanis le Roi), a 27 year old Tunisian Rapper has been arrested on Wednesday january 25, 2012 around 2 pm at his home in El Mourouj neighborhood in Tunis. According to his parents, 6 allegedly plain-clothes police officers broke into the house without showing their police badges or any warrant and asked the young Anis, who was at that time behind his computer, if he was the rapper behind the song “Shay Ma Tbaddel” (Nothing has Changed). When he confirmed, they took him and confiscated his computer and MP3 players without giving any further details to Anis’ parents who were choked by this brutal arrest.
I am pleased to inform you that I received your letter, the one you sent to the younger Tunisians around the world through http://www.pactejeunesse.tn, asking me and my fellow Tunisians to work together on coming up with ideas for a brighter future.
Through this letter, I will try to tackle the prime and most lucrative sector for all nations through the history of humanity: Education.
