FANON is an attempt to unravel these arguments by contextualising his work at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric ward, the symbolic seat of his conscience during the three years he spent in Algeria, from 1953 to 1956. The inner debates animating Fanon at this time were fueled by three narratives: the colonial psychiatry analyzing Algerians as primitive beings; the institutional psychotherapy Fanon stood for; and the Algerian War, filling the hospital with a new type of patients.
Since Fanon’s death in 1961, aged 36, his ideas have remained vivid. The world is no longer caught in movements for independence but structures of domination and alienation remain. For that very matter, Fanon’s struggles and works are more relevant than ever, even in today’s Algeria. Freedom and emancipation still are to be achieved for millions of men and women across the world.
The film is conceived as an “epic of madness”
One could tell Fanon’s story in various ways but the one I chose focuses on him as a psychiatrist, proud of his new position as head of a large hospital. But in the very first weeks after taking office, he witnessed another aberrancy he would underline as follows in his resignation letter: “Madness is one of the means through which men lose their freedom. With fright, I have noticed the state of alienation of the inhabitants of this country. If psychiatry is the medical proceedings through which we offer to individuals a way not to feel estranged in their environment, I must state that the Arab man, permanently alienated in his country, lives in an absolute state of depersonalisation. What is Algeria? A systematic dehumanisation.” Fanon eventually left the hospital and became a supporter of Algerian independence so that, as he suggested, he could become a better psychiatrist in taking part in the liberation of a people.
To tell this story, I worked with Fanon’s clinical notes found in the archives of the Blida-Joinville ward but also with the testimonies of the hospital staff who worked alongside him. Between 1998 and 2002, with Professor Bachir Ridouh, a psychiatrist who took over Fanon’s legacy after the war, I made a film titled MÉMOIRES D’ASILE during the filming of which I explored the backstage of the Blida-Joinville’s ward while collecting all the stories heard andtold about Fanon’s time. Then, I waited for the right moment to bring this fiction into existence.The film is conceived as an “epic of madness” that Fanon experiences, including medical, clinical elements but also events outside the hospital world that would forge the doctor’s ideas until he turns into an anti-colonial activist. The film holds on to Fanon’s point-of-view as an objective observer inside a hospital conceived as a laboratory for the aspects of alienation triggered by colonisation. Therefore, this film revolves around words, spoken by Algerian and French actors, which, in similar contexts of a restrained, muzzled speech, could still be said and heard by attentive ears today.
Abdenour Zahzah
