Salim Aggar — Director | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Salim Aggar was born on June 21, 1968 in Algiers. A graduate in French literature, he spent more than 22 years of his career in the Algerian press. Journalist in the country's most important newspapers such as L'Expression, Le Quotidien d'Oran and Horizons, he had in the meantime started a career as a director in 1989 by signing his first short film in super 8 at the age of 21 years old, entitled “God made the mountain and man made the city”.

He will then direct several other short films in the same format, the most prolific of which remains a documentary on children and war entitled Soldat à 13 ans. In another register, he worked as an assistant on the medium-length film “Cousines” by Lyès Salem (César for best short film in 2005) and in several documentaries and participated in the production of advertising spots.

He wrote several articles and theses on Algerian cinema, such as the review on “The 40 years of Algerian cinema” published by the Year of Algeria in France 2003, but also devoted himself to the promotion of short films with his association “To us the screens”, of which he has been president since 2002. He will be the first to launch a website dedicated to Algerian cinema. With this association he also launched the first film festival in the Algerian capital: The Algiers Cinematographic Days (JCA).

Since 2001, he has been preparing the production of a series of documentaries on Algerian cinema: The first part was completed in 2007 "It turns in Algiers", which shows the difficulties of Algerian filmmakers during the period of terrorism and which was presented in several festivals around the world: in San Francisco, Cork in Ireland, Amiens in France and the Al Jazeera Documentary Festival. In 2010, he made a second documentary entitled “Words of a French ALN Prisoner”, on the testimony of a French prisoner of the Algerian War. This documentary produced by ENTV was presented at the Paris Images Forum in 2012 and selected in several festivals: Amiens, at the Mediterranean Prize for Reporting and Documentary in Marseille in 2010, at meetings on the history and archives of Ciné- memory of Marseille and at the Henri Langlois international cinematographic meetings in Paris in 2012. A specialist in Arab and Western cinema, in 2017 he directed a documentary on one of the most important Arab directors, Youcef Chahine and on his relations with Algeria: “ Chahine, Algeria and cinema”. He concludes his filmography with an equally important documentary “The history of the film The Battle of Algiers” where he found 50 years later the main Algerian actors and technicians of Gillo Pontecorvo’s film.

Salim Aggar, who is very active in the world of cinema, has published several articles and contributions in several daily newspapers and magazines and has established himself on the media scene as an essential specialist in the field of cinema and television.

Since December 2018, he has held the position of director of the “Algerian Cinematography Center” (CAC), which notably manages the “Algerian Cinematheque”. Since his arrival in this position, he launched the site of the Algerian Cinematheque "www.cinematheque.dz", promoting the urgent management of the archives of Algerian and foreign cinema.

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