ABSTRACT
A number of African and Western films have presented the western Mediterranean world, but rarely with the situated depth of a lost classic of Moroccan cinema. When it came out in 1989, Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi's second feature film, Badis, was met with critical acclaim in Morocco as well as on the international festival scene. However, the lack of adequate distribution for national films in Morocco and the Maghreb meant that it never reached a wider audience. This is a deplorable situation not least because Badis provides a complex portrait of Moroccan society and its recent history, including the Spanish-Moroccan conflict as a miniature of the North-South divide. Badis also puts Moroccan society to the litmus test of its treatment of women. The other theme criss-crossing Badis is mixed marriage, which assumes an allegorical function in its narrative space.
