ITALY: INTERVIEW WITH TUNISIAN DIRECTOR RIDHA BEHI ON HIS NEW FILM "LA BOITE MAGIQUE"

Record ID: 636475

  • Title: ITALY: INTERVIEW WITH TUNISIAN DIRECTOR RIDHA BEHI ON HIS NEW FILM "LA BOITE MAGIQUE"
  • Date: 27th September 2002
  • Summary: LIDO, VENICE, ITALY (RECENT) (REUTERS) SOUNDBITE (French) HICHEM ROSTOM SAYING: "A marvel, a marvel, because I think that, ......... said that we stay like children forever, when you're an actor you have to have a soul like child, and when an actor is acting opposite a child it helps him to play a really sincere role, and I perhaps helped this child, but he helped me grea
  • Embargoed: 12th October 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LIOD, VENICE, ITALY
  • Country: Italy
  • Reuters ID: LVA6ZBC0T4MUEZUPSAC9G6QKJ6WP
  • Story Text: Tunisian director Ridha Behi's film about his relationship with cinema, La Boite Magique - The Magic Box- is reminicent of the much-loved Cinema Paradiso. The film showed recently at the Venice Film Festival La Boite Magique tells the story of Raouf - a film buff, who is just over forty, married and the father of two children. He has already written and made various films and it is in film that he finds the true essence of life, probably at the expense of those around him, particularly his wife, the Frenchwoman Lou.
    A European TV network asks him to make a film about his childhood relationship with cinema, and thus begins his investigation into the course of his life and himself.
    Directed by award winning Ridha Behi, the story is very close to home.
    "It's an autobiographical film so the idea really comes from my childhood with respect to my relationship with cinema and then with my father, of life during the war in which I grew up, where I was born, and it's mainly a film, when you get to the age of fifty you start to think about your past, your identity, it's important to take a break nowadays to reflect."
    It becomes clear to Raouf that as a child, film was his escape from paternal authority, the cinema acting as a privileged place for expressing his personality. It is at the cinema that he forms his strongest relationships: his first important friendship is with Mansour, his uncle on his mother's side, a travelling projectionist bon vivant who helps him discover cinema, offering him a magic box and this is when his life begins.
    Mansour is played by Hichem Rostom, a familiar face in both Tunisian and French films.
    "It's very hard being an actor in Tunisia because production isn't very important, but I consider myself to be privileged because I work in France a lot, because we have a double-culture, because the French colonised us for a century and but we learnt their language and their culture and it's good, it's a great gift, and I've been working in France for 25 years, I've done films in Tunisia and in France, the cinema has to be like that, more and more international, and the other good thing is that Tunisia is a big plateau for cinema."
    For Rostom, who's character was most influential person in the young Raouf's life, working with young actor Medhi Rebii was a particular pleasure.
    "A marvel, a marvel, because I think that, .........
    said that we stay like children forever, when you're an actor you have to have a soul like child, and when an actor is acting opposite a child it helps him to play a really sincere role, and I perhaps helped this child, but he helped me greatly, because I had to become a child to be able to communicate with him."
    --
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register