Sid Ali Mazif

Biography

Sid Ali Mazif (سيد علي مزيف), is an Algerian director, born in 1943 in Algiers. After starting as an assistant on the set of Twenty Years in Algiers by Marc Sator, Sid Ali Mazif studied at the Ben Aknoun National Cinema Institute, near Algiers. As part of his training, he made his first short films between 1965 and 1966. He then joined the future ONCIC for which he shot documentaries such as La Cueillette des Oranges and Le Paludisme en Algérie (1967). He also collaborated on two important collective films of Algerian cinema: Hell at Ten Years (1968) on the experience of children during the war of liberation and Récits de la Révolution (1970). His first feature film, Black Sweat tells the story of the repression of a miners' strike during colonialism. Les Nomades (1975) addresses the delicate problem of the necessary sedentarization of tribes. Since Leila and the Others (1977), Sid Ali Mazif has campaigned, through his films, for the improvement of the condition of women in his country.