Mshahdt Fylm Halfaouine Boy Of The — Terraces 1990 Mtrjm

The Gaze, the Threshold, and the Revolution: Negotiating Masculinity and Space in Férid Boughedir’s Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces (1990)

The alleyways of Halfaouine constitute a performative arena where young Noura fails spectacularly. The paper analyzes the circumcision scene and the subsequent “test of pain” as rituals of failed interpellation. Unlike the confident Rashid of Egyptian neo-realism, Noura is clumsy, weepy, and attracted to the erotic baraka (blessing/energy) of female singers. The street’s code—loud, aggressive, homosocial—alienates him. Boughedir thus critiques Bourguiba’s modernist project of “liberating” women while hardening men; Noura’s discomfort suggests that Tunisian masculinity remains a schizophrenic construct. mshahdt fylm Halfaouine Boy of the Terraces 1990 mtrjm

[Your Name] Course/Journal: Postcolonial Cinema & the Maghreb The Gaze, the Threshold, and the Revolution: Negotiating

Analyzing the film’s use of diegetic sound—the muezzin’s call overlapping with neighborhood gossip, the derbouka drums signaling weddings, the whisper networks of women—this section posits that Halfaouine is a film about listening more than seeing. Noura’s crisis is auditory: he cannot unhear the adult secrets transmitted across the terrace walls. The paper concludes that Boughedir equates social modernity not with new buildings, but with a new tolerance for acoustic transgression. Noura’s crisis is auditory: he cannot unhear the

Criterion Collection / Artificial Eye (UK) / Tunisian Ministry of Culture print.