Notes of Exile - Maurice El Medioni documentary movie

Описание: 'Notes of Exile' is a documentary movie about Maurice El Medioni and the exiled Jews of Algeria. This clip is a video teaser for the movie Chaos Films has been shooting over the last year.
Maurice El Medioni is the backbone of our narrative, using his personal and musical journey to tell the story of a turbulent history for the Jews of Algeria.
His story begins seven decades ago in the Algerian city of Oran. He was only nine years old when his brother bought an old piano in the local flea market. Maurice came back from school, sat in front of the piano, and hasn't stopped playing since.

Maurice's musical story holds a unique insight into the most important events in the history of the world and in the destiny of the Algerian Jews. As a child, Maurice entertained Jewish-Algerian school friends with traditional French-Jewish songs. Anti-Semitic laws dictated by Nazi-occupied France banished all Algerian Jews from school, granting Maurice more time to devote himself to music. At age 13, Maurices piano playing entertained American soldiers celebrating victory over the Nazi occupation of Algeria. They introduced Maurice to Rock n Roll, Rumba and other popular American music. A chance encounter with Arabic musicians introduced a teenaged Maurice to
Arabic Rai music. As the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued, Maurice was part of the creation of a new Rai sound. In the 1950s, amidst Algerian civil war, his capacity to blend genres would lead him to become one of few Jewish
performers in the Opera of Oran.

In 1961, a year before the Algerian War of Independence liberated Algeria from France, tensions were especially high between Jews and Arabs. European rights were not granted equally for Arabs and Jews, turning the streets
of Algeria into a dangerous place. It was then that a million French colonists and 160,000 Algerian Jews left for France and Israel.