Synopsis: In the city of Oudhref in the north of the Governorate of Gabes, women struggle behind their looms to prove their existence and uniqueness… women there are as rare as the rain… the women of Oudhref are the incarnation of art and memory, and they are the secret of life and to survival…
Submitter Statement: The implementation of this work did not start as the result of the present moment or as just a project to echo the calls for equality or other… it runs much deeper… it is a project in which we were born and with whom we grew up, so it has become one of us and we have become a part of it. This is work is significant in terms of awareness, existence and location… it is a form of faithfulness to this time and that time… it is in fact a debt that we owe and that we must fulfill with voice and echo. The story of this work does not date to recent present. It is rather an origin story since we grew up between the “here” and “there.” The scream of the khlala (iron beating comb) has awakened in us the spirit of research and documentation of heroes personified by “heroines” bearing an aesthetic and an artistic heritage that resonates between the duality of “child-bearing” and “protection.” The margoum and the female are a duality that is been renewed through meanings and stories where art and science inhabit a soft memory that has hardened as “warps” formed in the image of the chords of the hearts of these perseverant women. The essence of the margoum in its form and size is part of the spirit of the women and girls who have been struggling since time immemorial with a “kohl stick” and medal-like ragmas while jesting about what had happened and seeing good omens in what is to come… The elements of the story begin with the birth of “warps” and end when the yarn matures and the new god – i.e., the margoum of Oudhref – stands upright… squared or rectangular, bearing on its shoulders the signs of eternity and the symbols of finesse and dedication… The story is dialectical, like silence and clamor, like writing with repression… we went deep into the implementation of the “vision” of childhood and youth, where thought is a fantasy… where my grandmother sows spring before our eyes in bright shapes and colors… Despite the pain of prison and time… what the grandmother weaves in that quiet place between sand and sea is not devoid of novelty and wit, as if it were a legend worthy of narration in honor of the patient persevering women, and so that the sand does not flood our sea, narrowing our minds and throwing creativity into oblivion… the story also holds attempts to innovate… for a new untampered resurrection… Momentum and wealth are far-reaching… women, place and entity… Oudhref and the margoum… details, knots and a reduction of a conflict between an era and modernization, and talk of modernity… description, characterization, and employment of perception and cinematography… A context of reductionism… the story is worth safeguarding…
Director: Akram Moncer
Writer: Akram Moncer
Producer: Akram Moncer
Country of Origin: Tunisia
Country of Filming: Tunisia
Language: Arabic
Subtitles:
Runtime: 01:01:36
