On the Edge (Sur la planche) – Leila Kilani, Morocco 2011 Death For Sale (Mort à vendre) – Faouzi Bensaidi, Morocco 2011 We were very well advised, at the outset of Tangier's just-concluded 13th edition of Morocco's National Film Festival, to see the two films that in fact came to win the top two prizes. … Read more Filming Morocco’s Lower Rungs On the Social Ladder
French Protectorate brochure for the Morocco Pavilion at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, TALIM museum and research library, Tangier In this year of the centenary of the 1912 Treaty of Fez, retrospectives on Protectorate Morocco abound. The first thing you must know about Morocco, 100 years ago, is that two Protectorate zones were … Read more What You Must Know About (Protectorate) Morocco
Foreignization, domestication, transmutation… Karima Bouziane has mastered the vocabulary of her topic. At today's presentation at TALIM, the audience caught on immediately to this specialized world of semiotics, which has to do with the study of signs and communication. The capacity audience (09:00 on a Friday morning – a major feat!) was composed largely … Read more Domesticating Foreign Ads or Translating the Maghreb
From "Précipitations Annuelles," dry month map inset at TALIM research library, from the colonial era Institut Scientifique Chérifien The Scientific American picked up Reuters' article from today "Morocco prays for rain for first time since 2007." Now, I don't think that my prayers for dry weather last fall, when the Embassy contractor started our latest … Read more Let It Rain, On Morocco
For the last couple of months, settle into a Royal Air Maroc airplane seat, reach for the inflight magazine, and you'll see the cover story – the Museums of Tangier. Featuring, along with our friends the Kasbah Museum, the Tangier American Legation (TALIM) museum. We are thrilled that RAM, with its six million passengers per … Read more Read All About It: Legation & the Press
Our little Christmas road trip wound up yesterday. We left 8th century Moulay Idriss (photo above, nestled in the hills framed by Roman Volubilis) and struck almost due north, through Ouezzane and into the Rif Mountains. Ouezzane, perhaps best known here through the family of the Cherif of Ouezzane and his turn-of-the-century (19th-20th) "British Bride … Read more A Bridge Over Morocco’s Colonial Past
Bordj Nord in fog, Christmas Eve Fez, 2011 "Christmas in Fez!" was already taken as the title to a blog post by another American last year. In any case, for us it was Christmas Eve in Fez, and Christmas day at the Roman ruins of Volubilis, then on to Moulay Idriss, a sacred destination. Above, … Read more Moroccan Christmas in a Holy Town: Moulay Idriss
Party poster show, Election Day minus 4 UPDATE 11/26/2011: Checking international media sources, it appears that the moderate Islamist PJD is claiming victory in yesterday's parliamentary elections in Morocco. And it looks like voter turnout, though slightly higher than in 2007, is still below half the electorate – the result no doubt of a vigorous … Read more Following Morocco’s Elections From Afar
No qualitative or political inference to my post title – it's just a phrase, usually denoting the kind of people who show up at international conflabs like Davos and Aspen. That said, MEDays brought an impressive array of people from all walks and regions to Tangier, for the 4th consecutive year. It was a Davos … Read more MEDays 2011: Tangier Welcomes the Great & Good
Today Morocco celebrates Independence Day. "The View From Fez," a fine English-language blog, has some photos from King Mohammed V's return from exile, the date of which determined Morocco's Independence Day. I know what they say about reading the telephone book, but there is great value in leafing through the 1956 Tangier Anuario Telefonico, reprinted … Read more Moroccan Independence: November 18, 1956
