Le jardin d’essai

This double session, a short and a medium-length film, condenses the major concerns that guide the cinema imagined by Dania Reymond-Boughenou. On the one hand, there are the spatial coordinates that make us land in Algeria. The current situation of the country and its colonial past (the war of independence or the black decade plunged in a civil conflict) often, directly or tangentially, take center stage in her stories. On the other hand, the interest in the creative process and the transformative potential that the director detects in the practice of filmmaking are also present. In La Tempête, with an evocative rain in the background, we are reminded that cinema arrived in Algeria as a means of propaganda, a vehicle at the service of the French empire. Following this reflective path, in Le Jardin d'essai we see first the casting and then the rehearsals for a future film. The setting where the tests take place is incomparable, a well-known botanical garden in the Hamma district of Algiers, created during the colonial period and later converted into a park. The director plays with the exotic imaginary of classical cinema, with gardens, palm trees and fountains, to interweave the plots of a double fiction. Thus, within a film controlled only in appearance (with documentary touches, with gestures and responses that, we sense, are out of the script), we get to know the group of young people who, together with the director, captain of the ship, consider how to resist, how not to give up in their determination to continue creating despite the difficulties. ANDREA MORÁN