A CINEMA IN TANGIER.
- Words Aida Alami
- Photography Emma Trim & Karima Maruan
The artist Yto Barrada on co-founding a cinema for the city that inspires her art.
Yto Barrada discovered the magical world of film when she moved with her mother to Tangier at the age of seven. As a child, she often went to Cinema Lux, located in the city center, where the projectionist would let her sit on a chair beside him to watch a movie.
Some decades later, Barrada, who is now a successful multimedia visual artist, still enjoys watching films from the projection box.1 But today, she is doing so in a cinema she revived and saved from the neglect afflicting theaters across Morocco. Located in the old part of Tangier, a city on the tip of the African continent, Cinémathèque de Tanger is an art space that is unique in Morocco. Not just a movie theater, but also an art gallery and café, it sits on the city’s famed 9 Avril 1947 Square, also called the Grand Socc...
