Building an Alternative Distribution Network for Moroccan Cinema: Online Audiences, Festival Networks and Transnational Talent Development

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The project builds on unplanned opportunities for impact and engagement activities beyond academia that have emerged during the AHRC-funded Transnational Moroccan Cinema research project. It aims to provide a greater visibility to Moroccan cinema by bringing three artistically innovative but little-known Moroccan films (one narrative feature, one documentary feature and one short film) to the attention of a diverse range of audiences in Morocco, the UK and internationally (via online distribution). This will be achieved by working with film archives and Moroccan filmmakers or producers to locate the films, secure the rights to screen them and then work with specialists in digital restoration as well as subtitlers to produce a high-quality digital cinema package (DCP) of each films. The films will then be launched across the network of four UK film festivals specialising in African or Arab cinema and at two festivals in Morocco before being made available for free online for a period of 12 months. Using a group of online 'influencers' to bring these films to the attention of a transnational audience online, the intention is to reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible, not just researchers and cinephiles who may already be aware of these films and filmmakers.In essence, this project is a response to the challenge laid down by filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins for researchers, translators and film archivists to make significant but little known films from across the world more visible to as wide an audience as possible. Disseminating these films to an online audience will therefore enhance the understanding and appreciation of Moroccan cinema more generally. However, this project also focuses on how the wider recognition of these films can act as a catalyst for a series of more targeted initiatives. A second stage of this project will thus build on the visibility given to these lost classics of Moroccan cinema in order to: (a) allow the films to be used as a focal point for emerging Moroccan filmmakers to better understand their own film history and how such an understanding can inform and enhance their own filmmaking(b) offer a space for encounter between film schools in Morocco and abroad (more specifically the UK) that can develop collaboration, networking, training and a sharing of knowledge in what might be described as a process of transnational talent development for emerging Moroccan filmmakers(c) encourage new initiatives and collaboration between the film industry, festival organisers, and policy makers in Morocco and the UK relating to international co-production and new strategies for distribution (d) produce a video essay inspired by the three digitally restored Moroccan films that offers an innovative way of thinking about these films will bring the films to the attention of cinephiles, researchers and students of world cinema, who may be aware of their existence, and the diversity of Moroccan cinema more generally.