Gnaouas | Gnawa Music – Corps et Âme

A Film Night with Izza Génini

A rare encounter. Izza Génini, born in Casablanca in 1942 and living in Paris since the age of eighteen, is an icon. A pioneer of Moroccan documentary film, she produced the legendary El Hal / Transes (1981) by Ahmed El Maanouni about Nass El Ghiwane, which Martin Scorsese had restored decades later especially for his World Cinema Project.martin Scorsese had restored decades later for his World Cinema Project; founder of the Paris distribution house that made a large part of Moroccan and pan-African cinema visible in Europe in the first place. But above all, she is the creator of the monumental series Maroc, corps et âme, a filmed encyclopedia of Moroccan music that has been growing since 1987 and is now considered the most important audiovisual archive of the soundscapes of her homeland.

HKW is delighted to welcome Izza Génini to Berlin in person, following the screening of two films that can be read like two chapters of a single book. She made the first one herself: Gnaouas (1989), the first film ever devoted exclusively to Gnawa music - a purple somewhere between Marrakech and Essaouira, documented in that rare blend of ethnographic precision and cinematographic tenderness that has become the hallmark of her entire series.

The second is Frank Cassenti's Gnawa Music - Corps et Âme (2010), awarded the SACEM prize in 2011, which continues the thread two decades later: a musical road trip from Tangier to Essaouira, with the unforgettable Maalem Mahmoud Guinia - now a legend himself, having died in 2015 -, Majid Bekkas and other great masters of the tradition. The fact that Cassenti continues the title of Génini's own series as a subtitle is no coincidence, but a consistent continuation: the same dedication to sound as the carrier of a culture, the same patience in the face of mystery. This will be followed by a discussion with Izza Génini, one of the most important voices that Morocco has given itself through the image.Translated with DeepL

Next date:

• Date Thursday, 02/July/2026 21:00
• Venue Haus der Kulturen der Welt
• Address John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten