Marrakech Inshallah – A film by Steffen Pierce

Posted on December 22nd, 2006 by .
Categories: Arts & culture, Morocco.

Harvard Film Archive’s Steffen Pierce to Debut Feature Film Saturday – HCL News – Harvard College Library
In the 1980s when Steffen Pierce, Assistant Curator of the Harvard Film Archive, spent several years working as a photographer in southern Spain, he fell in love with the country and culture of nearby Morocco, and took advantage of the opportunity to visit close to every other month. Later when a New York producer hired him to return to Morocco and Algiers to write a script on the French historical figure Charles de Foucauld, he took the job—but the film was never made. In frustration, Pierce decided to turn to small-budget films that he could make himself. Two decades later, Pierce, working in collaboration with brother and fellow filmmaker Christian, has channeled his familiarity with Morocco to produce two movies filmed there on location.

This Saturday, December 16, Pierce and his brother will debut their feature film, Marrakech Inshallah, at the HFA in a special screening and meet-the-director event. Pierce, who has been with the HFA for 15 years, was motivated to make the fictional film after his experiences with the brothers’ first movie made on Moroccan soil, the documentary The Bride Market of Imilchil (1988). At the time, the Pierces interviewed two dozen individuals for their film and only later, after they had returned to the United States, learned that everyone they’d spoken to had been arrested and “re-interviewed” by Moroccan authorities.

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