Albert Samama
Chekli
 |
| Albert Samama Chekli
|
Born in
Tunis in 1872 and died in 1934 in Tunis, Albert Samama Chekli is the first
Tunisian filmmaker and a pioneer of national cinema. HE is also one of the earliest filmmakers in
the world.
Of Spanish Jewish origin, his father, a banker, an aide to Sadok Bey,
Albert knew very early social life in the palaces of Tunis. He continued
his studies with Charles Martial Lavigerie and the Jesuits in Marseilles. He
traveled extensively, to Cape Horn, China and Australia. He got his
nickname "Chikli" from the Brotherhood of Firemen on Chikli Island, a
small island on Lake of Tunis where Albert Samama organized some great parties.
In 1896, he returned to Tunisia and the capital with projects making the first
film images with the photographer Soler. He corresponded with the brothers
Auguste and Louis Lumiere, especially when he screened the films, Leaving the Lumière factory in Lyon and The
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. Fascinated by photography and
cinematography, but also by all the sciences and new technologies, he is thus
the first to introduce the bicycle to Tunisia, the wireless telegraph and the
first X-ray machine to a hospital of Tunis. He also rab the first aerial
photographs of Tunisia in 1908, ballooning from Hammam Lif and
Grombalia. He filmed the earthquake in Messina in 1908 and in 1909, shooting
underwater. In 1910, he filmed Tuna fishing in Tunisia for the Prince of
Monaco.
He developed a taste for documentary and reportage and begins to cover events
in all of Tunisia for the studios Pathé and Gaumont and the newspapers Le Matin
and L'Illustration. As a reporter, he also filmed the short Beylicale,
making both shots anecdotal – like a solemn Hedi Bey on the steps of Bardo -
historical, like the funeral of Naceur Bey.
Subsequently, he tries to make a kind of "encyclopedia of pictures of
Tunisian life." That's why he went to the countryside and spent long
weeks alongside rural populations. In his first fiction short, Zohra
(1922), the first Tunisian film fiction, Samama-Chikli pays tribute to these
tribes by telling the story of a young shipwrecked Frenchman, who fell from a
plane that was collected by Bedouins and the Tunisian lived for a time
with them. This film was very successful in his presentation to the Omnia
Pathe Cinema in Tunis. He gave his daughter, Haydee Tamzali the leading
role, and she became the first female performer and writer.
Samama-Chikli The Eclipse and then shoots, in 1923-1924, Ain el Ghazal or The
Girl from Carthage. A drama of Arab life, the first feature film directed
by a Tunisian. Produced with the support of Habib Bey who attended the filming
in Tunis, he supplied his palace and all the extras including Samama-Chikli that
were needed. A melodrama, the film tells of the impossible love between a
teacher and a girl whose father has promised her to the son of the sheikh.
He died in 1934 in Tunis. The epitaph on his tomb reads: "Tireless
in curiosity, daring in courage and daring in the enterprise, obstinate in the
trial, resigned in misfortune, he leaves friends."
