Guerrilla Filmmaking with Rachid Djaïdani

For many years, hexagonal writer-turned-filmmaker Rachid Djaïdani worked and resided outside of the French filmic establishment. With unconventional modes of filming and producing, including not working from a script, Djaïdani produced two guerrilla films that fit within a wave of guerrilla filmmaking in France, specifically his first fiction-feature Rengaine (2012) and his first documentary-feature Encré (2014). These films were self-financed and self-produced; actors were most often non-professional and handpicked from Djaïdani’s family and closest friends; and Djaïdani never received a license to film from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée. In some ways, his guerrilla filmmaking can be seen to invest the local, skip over the national, and yet nevertheless accede to the global. This chapter asks to what degree Djaïdani complicates cinéma-monde by probing where guerrilla filmmaking and France’s postcolonial ethnic minority filmmakers fit into its purview.