You know, we should have had, oh. Okay, so while people are joining us, I just want to say welcome to this event, hosted by the Sowas Middle East Institute and co-chaired by myself, the Namata Center for Palestine Studies and Narges Fersat, Chair of the Center for Iranian Studies.  So he's in the background helping everything move on. So this is going to be a special evening because it's talking about Moroccan cinema, which has always been exciting and original and thought-provoking in from my perspective. And we have three panelists here to talk about the recent collaboration in Morocco Uncut. And so I will introduce them at the beginning with the lady, Florence Martin, who works on French transnational studies at a culture university in the United States. Welcome. And then Professor William Hughes, who is Professor of Film Studies at Exeter University. And I've also got Jamal Balmand, who is a lecturer in cinema, I think, or in film, but correct me if I'm wrong, at Muhammad V University in Morocco, Rabat. So welcome, everything. The format today will be a discussion or presentations from each of the panelists here. That will take around half an hour, 20 minutes to half an hour. And then we ask you to put your questions in the question and answer bubble at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And we will collect those questions and we will pose those questions to the authors. They're going to talk without a presentation, so that would be quite interesting to then think about the questions that arise as they are talking. Without further ado, welcome to SOAS online and looking forward to hearing your presentation. I don't know who wants to start, but it's up to you to decide. Okay, thank you, Dina. That will be me. So my name is Will Higbee and together with Jamal Balmand and Flo Martin, we formed part of a research team that's been looking quite intensively at the current state in the development of Moroccan cinema in all its many forms and guises over the past five years or so, we've been working together. What we wanted to do with this session was really to have a brief introduction from the three of us moving across some of the, what we think are the key questions and key approaches in relation to not only the research project, but also the book. And then open this up for discussion as much as possible. We're really delighted to be here and sort of thank you very much for inviting us and we hope this is gonna be a sort of an open and sort of lively discussion. So just to start with, perhaps I should say a few words about why we came to this project, why focus on Moroccan cinema. So the project that led to the book, Moroccan Cinema Uncut really began in around 2015. It was a research project that was supported by the AHRC for three years. And the activities involved in the research project were quite varied. So we had sort of the more sort of traditional research activities that were going on amongst the team, but we're also very clear that this was a project that we wanted to engage with the Moroccan film industry, with Moroccan filmmakers, and with film educators and film students in Morocco. So there was very much a focus in this project on engaging with the film industry, with the CESAM, which is the National Screen Agency, the Moroccan Film Council, but also with filmmakers and with festivals and festival organizers. Because one of the things that we were particularly interested in was the fact that Moroccan cinema had had this sort of very impressive rise since the mid-1990s. For so long it had been overshadowed, I think by the achievements and the output of Algerian and Tunisian cinema, certainly in the sort of 70s, 80s and early 90s. But from the mid-1990s to around 2015, there'd been a very significant rise in terms of production due to investment in film production coming from the state. So moving from around two or three films a year in the late 1980s to 25 to 30 feature films in the mid-2010s, which placed Morocco as, according to some estimations, the fourth largest producer of films on the African continent. So this increase in production and a growing international recognition for a limited number of Moroccan art house directors was coming to our attention. But at the same time, it was led with a sort of paradox that at the same time there was more films that were being produced. There was a question as to where these films were being seen. It was precisely a moment when distribution and exhibition, the infrastructure in Morocco was in crisis and there was really only a limited visibility internationally for Moroccan cinema. So the aim of the book was to ask why this might be and to see if an analysis of Moroccan cinema and the Moroccan film industry could also act as a case study for other small nation cinemas to use Duncan Petrie and Meta Huot's term in Africa but also in the MENA region. And Flo's going to pick up on this point in a moment but we felt that the transnational approach was the right way to frame this analysis of the current state of Moroccan cinema. Firstly, because the transnational, we think allows us to explore the dynamic between the national and the transnational, the local and the global. And to look at this as a kind of a dynamic fluid but also contested relationship. For example, sometimes the relationship between diasporic filmmakers and their counterparts in Morocco. But we also wanted to use the transnational of a way of understanding the challenges and opportunities there were for these filmmakers, not only in producing films but also in particularly in the way in which these films could circulate internationally through international film festivals and thinking of the opportunities and possibilities that were being offered increasingly by digital disruption and the online distribution of these films. So the book itself was divided into three parts looking firstly at what we call production from above which was essentially the established production hubs for Moroccan cinema, the well-established models of international co-production. On the other hand, looking in the second part of the cinema from below which was considering how there are also at the same time Moroccan filmmakers who are working totally outside of that system and looking for ways in which their films can reach audiences in quite different ways. But also thinking about in this idea of production from below alternative means of film education that are appearing different ways in which emerging Moroccan filmmakers can get training and access to the means of production. And finally the third part looks specifically at distribution networks. So not just audiences internationally and nationally but also festivals and the challenges as I said posed by digital disruption. And Flo's gonna pick up now on this question of the theoretical grounding around transnationalism and then Jamal is gonna talk a bit more about this idea of a multiplicity of voices. So I'll hand over to Flo first of all. Thank you. Thank you, Will. My name is Flo Martin. I teach at Carrot Tree College in the US. So our approach was matched by an evolving context obviously from if you wish pictured as a widening circle that goes from the post-colonial to a post post-colonial to the transnational, the globalized. So applying an exclusive post-colonial lens as we've done in previous things in the years 2010 is problematic for Moroccan cinema because the enduring influence left by the French colonial rule on society, politics, cultural productions is much less vivid than it used to be in the 1970s or 80s. The Pyrenees of the time, when Nani, Manuni, Beliazid and so on, born under the colonial rule had come back from training outside the kingdom and shot documentaries for the CCM to support the independent nation and also to an also shot feature films that explored nationalistic struggles or at minimum denounced the colonial rule. But now we're dealing with filmmakers who were born after the colonial rule and they're more likely to denounce the impact of neoliberal globalization on contemporary Moroccan society rather than leading to economic disparities, migrations and so on and so forth. So we're clearly at this point in a post-colonial era. So what are we going to do? Even if France is still the major partner for transnational productions, we have observed the de-orbiting will move away from an excessive reliance on the axis, the old colonial axis, Morocco and France in both the filmic narratives and in the modes of production. The films are in Moroccan Darija rather than in French. They tackle Moroccan themes rather than French themes. And they're no longer exclusively rely on the French funding planet if you wish. So Moroccan producers have joined a much wider transnational network of funding centers outside of France, be they in Europe like Brussels, Amsterdam or in the Arab world like Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi. And then today's French influence appears in a much more muted hybridized fashion within a larger context of globalized influences. So it is these global influences both in terms of artistic production and financial production that we were interested in looking at. In that sense, today's Moroccan transnational cinema is de-centered, free to engage in a circulation of people, of goods, of narratives, of languages, funding schemes across multiple borders as opposed to what it used to be in, it used to do in the previous incarnation of Moroccan cinema. It has also de-centered at home. It no longer relies exclusively we show on traditional national sites of production like the CCM or the ones that studios, but also on production hubs such as Casablanca and Tangier which have become increasingly cosmopolitan due in part to the return of diasporic filmmakers to Morocco or to what will cause cinemas de passage. Finally, the network of this retribution is also de-centered in several ways in the age of post-cinema. So we've had post, post, post and post again, post-cinema that we all know too well especially right now that we are in a pandemic and look, we're not in the cinema happy to view a movie on a large screen but we are all sort of joining by a multiplicity of screens. And on that I will give my mic to Jamal. Thanks Flo. So hello everyone, my name is Jamal Bahman. I teach at Mohamed 50 University in Rabat, Morocco. So there is a lot that is new about this book that is new and French. So I mean, Flo and Dandwell have mentioned the approach that we have taken, I mean to work with Moroccan cinema but lead me also to say a little bit about the material what is included in the book in terms of content. So there has been a lot of scholarship on Moroccan cinema before, of course, I mean in different languages. So a lot of it in French but a lot more in Arabic and published locally. Unfortunately, that doesn't get a lot of international visibility but also there has been, I mean, a modest, I mean, some of knowledge production about the cinema in English. Yet, I mean, this book is really, I mean, very inclusive. So when we start this project, we will just like three of us and then Stephen Yvonne the peer who was also a research pillar on project like myself. We started just interviewing everyone and talking to different people without really trying to come to any conclusions at all. For the first two years, we're just really very open and very broad and we organized events as part of the project and brought in people together for the first time. And that resulted in a really a book that tries to look at Moroccan cinema in like a very inclusive way. Hence the answer, you know, in the title. Okay, so try to include, I mean, to really talk about Moroccan cinema in all its complexity and diversity. So the first time in a book about Moroccan cinema, there are sections about Amazir cinema. So cinema in the Berber language, we talk about its history, but also challenges that it faced at the beginning in the 1990s when it first came into existence, but also challenges that it faced because of digital disruption after 2000s. We talk also about a new kind of Moroccan filmmaking that exists within the broad tent of Moroccan cinema. So we talk about radical filmmaking, experimental filmmaking. We talk about people like Nadeer Bohanmouche, Ishaan Al-Asri, and then we talk also about, you know, places that have been like production hubs of Moroccan cinema, Moroccan international cinema that had been overlooked before. Like where's Azat? But we don't talk also just about where's Azat as the place where films like Babel, you know, and other movies, Lawrence of Arabia and so on were produced in the past. We talk about it as a place that also is home to a film school. So film schools are included in this book and that's also something new, but it's also a new phenomenon in country. What we talk about really how, you know, Moroccan film students are a new kind of demographic in the landscape of Moroccan cinema and they are here in the age of digital disruption and they are trying to make their voices heard in a cinema system that is not always, I mean, flexible enough. I mean, we'll talk about that, I mean, much later, so I mean, transnational approach that Will and Lo have explained really allowed us to take stock but also to examine, you know, all this diversity in a very multi-sighted and truly genuinely interdisciplinary way. And both in Morocco and at home because Moroccan cinema is not just Moroccan cinema in its like national circulation but also in its global circulation and not only in like in France but also, I mean, all over the world, the really in the Middle East, in the Americas and so on. So, and we really hope, I mean, I think one plus of this book is that we hope that it would be the first step, okay? In a new kind of Moroccan, in a new kind of scholarship about Moroccan cinema that would go beyond, I mean, the interpretive framework of national cinema or like the analytical framework of Moroccan cinema being all about CCN, the Moroccan cinema center in the Rabat, national film bureaucracy and so on. Moroccan cinema is much more diverse than that and it's becoming even more diverse and more complicated in the age of globalization. Yeah, thank you. Okay, thanks Jamal. Before we opened it out to a broader discussion and maybe got to some of the questions in the Q&A, another thing we wanted to do was just we each pick, we each selected what we felt was a question that was an important question or theme that was running through the book itself. So we're just gonna speak very briefly, each of us about that. I'm gonna start, one of the kind of driving questions for me was how does or how can Moroccan cinema realize a transnational reach? Because we talked about earlier the difficulty for Moroccan cinema to reach an international audience. Actually, that difficulty starts domestically as well. That despite this success in raising levels of production and the inward investment that is attracting foreign producers to come and shoot in Morocco, which we have to acknowledge benefits to foreign producers far more than it does as the local filmmakers. We were trying to think about what steps could be put in place and working with industry and working with filmmakers to better understand how they could reach a transnational audience. So one of the things that we focused on in the book in particular was the importance of international co-production, both in what you might call official bilateral multilateral treaty agreements between different nation states, but also unofficial. So the work that goes on, for example, outside of the official channels and collaboration between filmmakers. One of the things we noticed as well was that there used to be very much a kind of emphasis on the post-colonial access between France and Morocco. And although it's still true that the largest number of co-productions that take place are between France and Morocco. Actually, just focusing on that relationship solely and thinking in terms of a post-colonial cinema belies the kind of impact and development of international co-production activity that's going on in South America, with Argentina, for example, with an increasing number of European nations, but also in relation to the Gulf states. And we're thinking here not only about co-production, but also the money that's being invested through film festivals and film funds in relation to development and post-production. So understanding how Moroccan filmmakers can navigate that international landscape of film funds, co-production, and film markets was a key question that was running through the book Forrest. And there's also an issue of how that links into the International Festival Network, because the International Festival Network operates of major A-list international film festivals, but also of smaller niche boutique festivals, film festivals that operate within a national context, is really important for Moroccan filmmakers in the sense that it functions as a kind of alternative distribution network for the filmmakers to have their films reach international audiences, but also that festival network is important in terms of the networking function that it offers in terms of the industry to build professional relationships, to look for co-producing partners, to also gain an advantage of through transnational talent development, as we call it in relation to better kind of accessing training labs and development initiatives and schemes and so forth for Moroccan filmmakers. Now, this is something that we were very keen to emphasize in the study, but it's also something that is incredibly challenging. And one of the things that we found is there was often a disparity and a disconnect between a small elite of filmmakers, often located in the diaspora, who were more attuned to those opportunities internationally, better equipped to network and to travel internationally to those festivals and markets, and whose films travel better on the international festival network. So there's still, I think, work to be done in terms of allowing a greater range of Moroccan cinema in its true diversity to reach international audiences and to find those audiences, which kind of brings me onto the final point that I wanted to note there, which is just the way in which digital disruption has changed that landscape in terms of access. On the one hand, we can see that Moroccan films can travel virtually as never before. They can find audiences, they can be seen on platforms. And we did notice in the research we did that there were sort of examples of that success happening. But equally, that issue of access, even in a digital age and in relation to sort of online viewing still remains. The question of who are the gatekeepers, how films access and reach their audiences is a really important one. And we can maybe elaborate on that a bit later in terms of the challenges that Moroccan cinema finds in terms of accessing those digital online distribution networks to reach its audiences. But I just want to finish just to stop there and then hand over to Flo, who's gonna say a bit more. Thanks, Will. So my question that I'm gonna talk about today is how does Moroccan cinema accommodate diverse voices or even perhaps flip it and say, how do diverse voices find a way into Moroccan transnational cinema in the years 2010? And so to be brief, I'll mention three marginalized groups, the Jewish community, the Amazigh community and women. And I will probably lean more on women. Amazigh cinema, as Jermal told you earlier, developed in the 1990s in what became a Sussiwood, just like in Hollywood and Bollywood, from the region of Suss, a cinema on VHS that was easy to ship to the remote villages and also to the diaspora. And it was not necessarily supported by the state given its nationalistic cultural impulses. So starting in the years 2000, the Amazigh diasporic filmmakers become professional filmmakers. And we see Yasmin Qassari direct The Sleeping Child, for instance, the first film with extensive dialogues in Tamazigh. And Mohamed Amin Ben-Amraoui film, Adios Karman, shot in the rift entirely in Tarifit in Spanish. So both transnational productions, and that's important, they were this time funded by Doha, Belgium, all sorts of other places outside of Morocco. These transnational productions tour the international festivals and gain some international visibility. The right of Amazigh film is then confirmed at home by Kamal Ashkar Tighir Jerusalem, Echoes of the Melah, which is a fascinating documentary on the shared histories of the Jewish community and the Amazigh community. And then its latest incarnation, one we found, was by people like Tala Hadid, a director of Moroccan and Iraqi descent, who directed The Narrow Frame of Midnight, a transnational co-production with a transnational narrative, actually that moves between Morocco, Kurdistan, Turkey, Iraq. And she played with a variety of transnational centers in order to produce her film. She got funding from the CCM in Morocco, the British Institute, Doha Sundance, Fonsuud, the Alouan Foundation. And which is exactly what Moroccan women do, we argue, they, in the years 2000, their numbers has grown from four in the 1980s to over 20, and that's in part due to the digital revolution, but they, in the years 2010, have two distinctive creative strategies in order to produce. One is to negotiate with the establishment and the other one is to circumvent it and go from one to the other. So in the first instance, women directors become very savvy in negotiating within and outside the socio-cultural, political landscape of Morocco and its institutions like the TV channel or the CCM, both in the way they finance their films transnationally and in the representational strategies, they adopt to address taboos. Women no longer systematically resort to coded language, for instance, to talk about themselves or about sex. They also respond to what is going on in Morocco, the king, and it's very difficult for us, I think to actually, I just need to say to put it out there, to talk about Morocco without talking about the larger context of Morocco, historical and political, which is what we do in the book, so you know, so it's completely contextualized. So they respond to what's going on, be it the Mudawana, the new family code in 2004 or the Mitu movement, which is more global, as you know. For instance, and they also respond to political initiatives such as the Equity and Reconciliation Commission that Mohammed VI put on in order to examine the years of lead. So this is a whole, anyway. And much like Hadid, Killani's transnational production assembled funds from institutions for her film Our Forbidden Places in 2008. From institutions including the CCM, the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in Morocco, the CNC in Fons-soud in France and also won multiple awards for her film. Yasmani Kassari also films beyond in her fiction film, The Sleeping Child, about the women left behind by their husbands who are migrating to Europe. Her focus is on a triply marginalized community, Amazigh, rural and female. And that triple marginalized community element makes the narrative all the more powerful. And again, this super local focus is a transnational production. Transnational film directors also respond to the Mudawana, the new family code with films of various genres. There is a comedy. Number one by Tahiri. There is a rom-com, Maroc, by Leila Marakshi. Documentary, I have something to tell you by Dalila Inad. And the latter is interesting to me because it is also a way of filming beyond the event of the Mudawana by seeing how women, how do you communicate that law to women, to poor rural women or women in factories who do not know what their rights are? And so she shows what a long road there is still to go. No, the long road ahead to achieve equal rights. So even though Inad produced her film with the help of transnational institutions like Dozem, NMO, C&C, French TVs, her film does not completely celebrate the Mudawana in some ways. They also find ways, as I said, to circumvent the establishment and find new hubs of transnational production. And this is interesting. There are two main ways that we identified. One is filmmakers turned installation artists who use funds from museums and foundations to produce either their films as Farid Abel Yazid is doing. She is doing a series of short, 26-minute long documentaries on Amazigh music and dance paid for by the Leila Benjeloud Foundation, which will be hosted in a music on the multiple cultures of Morocco in Casablanca. And of course, all this didn't happen in a void, by the way, in a vacuum. Mohammed VI did declare that there were multiple cultures in Morocco as opposed to the old myth of one Arab Muslim Moroccan identity. And then the second one would be Bushra Khalili, who in her activist video art, straight stories on clandestine passages at both the Strait of Gibraltar, the one in Istanbul, is actually using international funds and is exhibited at the MoMA in New York, at the Tuileries in Paris and so on. Finally, Sonia Terrab, which is an interesting experiment, turned to something called Géorgia, an online talent incubator supported by Nabil Ayush. And she produced Marochiat, a series of one minute long capsules, which she now is distributing on Facebook, which are visible on Facebook. And these are in answer to the Me Too movement. And this Me Too, the capsules show each woman filmed frontally from various walks of life, various age groups, and each woman is outside sort of reoccupying the public space. Or occupying the public space. And I think this is quite a radical move in shifting productions on film, on shifting production and film viewing from physical locations to virtual ones with an online curating space means that you can dodge the control of the state, yet never be clandestine because Nabil Ayush, who is supporting this, is one of the biggest producers in Casablanca, part of the establishment. So to skirt around the establishment, it's not to hide from it, but to maintain a transvergent relationship with it, to converge with it at times, to diverge from it at others. And the question however remains, which is the same question that Will posed, who will see these films, apart from the capsules on Facebook, how visible is this new cinema both within and outside the kingdom? And Jamal, it's yours to respond. What is the audience for Moroccan cinema today? What are the people watching these movies? And also like when filmmakers make movies, what are they making these films for? So the question of the audience is a really very critical one. But I want to link that question of the audience to really something that has not been going well for Moroccan cinema. So in terms of production numbers, in terms of international visibility, Moroccan cinema has gained a lot and has gained a lot of momentum over the last two decades. Yet at home, the number of cinema theaters has gone down. So from about 300 cinemas in the early 80s, there are less than 30 cinemas left today. So that is a big challenge for Moroccan cinema because a lot of films are being made. For example, 20 to 25 feature land fiction movies and documentaries every year. That's quite a lot on the African continent, a lot more short documentaries. So the Moroccan government through the National Cinema Center, CCM, is supporting a lot of productions, yet distributing and getting these movies to be watched by Moroccans. I mean beyond the festival circuit is a big challenge because the small number of cinemas that are left are mostly in big cities like Casablanca, Rabat, and then Tangier and Marrakesh. So Moroccan cinema is not really reaching its audience using traditional channels of distribution and exhibition. Okay, come back to this point because digital disruption and I think it's responsible for what's been happening because it's not happening only in Morocco, it's happening also all over the continent or the African continent. So less people, especially less young people are going to the movies, are going to cinema to watch films. So the number of film going numbers are really going down. So even when we talk about Moroccan films, popping the box office, okay, which is a kind of unique situation to Morocco since 1990s. So when there is a good Moroccan film out there, Moroccans go to cinema, they watch it more than they watch, you know, Hollywood productions and so on. Yet the problem is that the number of theaters is going down, but also piracy is here. So film piracy is a big problem, okay? It is affecting, you know, all sorts of films in the country.   But of course, a lot of Moroccan film institutions, they have blamed pirates really for contributing to the shrinking number of cinemas in the country. I don't think that that is true. And in this book, we argue that, I mean, this film piracy does not always affect, you know, Moroccan films badly because if you take examples of Kazanigra by Nordelech Mare, okay, which was a box office hit in 2008, it was released in cinemas, but at the same time, it was available in the black market as a DVD, but also digital copies were available on the internet at the time. Still, the film did very, very well in cinemas. And although, you know, it was pirated really from day one, okay. So, but a lot of movies that have not been pirated were released in cinemas and they didn't do very well. So saying that piracy leads, okay, particularly, I mean, to really, to less people going to cinema to watch Moroccan movies is not, I mean, is not always, I mean, true. But yet, I mean, piracy is here, but we see it rather as a phenomenon, as a cultural phenomenon that just shows that, you know, lots of things are happening to distribution and exhibition of Moroccan movies. So more and more young people in particular, I mean, are watching these movies online, talking about them. I teach cinema to my students at the university in Rabat and every year I run a research seminar on that and the really level of interest in Moroccan cinema seems to be going up among young people. They know so much about it. But when you ask them how many times they go to cinema, very, very few of them, I mean, really go to cinema. And even when they go there, they go to watch international productions sometimes because they are blockbusters, everybody is talking about them. In Moroccan movies, they seem to be consuming more of them, I mean, online and because again, they are pirated, they are available. But also they, I mean, during lockdown, I mean, when the crisis started, I mean, in March in Morocco, the country, like everywhere around the world, it was locked down on its people, and then CCM, okay? Surprisingly, maybe, I mean, this kind of film board of the country, which has often, I mean, given this image as being very limited, being very bureaucratic, being against, you know, digitization of distribution and exhibition, launched a program of online screenings. Okay, so they screened a lot of Moroccan movies and that really lead to a lot more interest in Moroccan cinema among the population, but especially among young people. But still, I mean, the screening program of CCM stopped in November. Now, the movies that are made every year, many of them get, you know, I mean, go to festivals, national and international. Some are released in cinemas, but a lot really, I mean, don't get, you know, to be watched by the Moroccan audience. So that is a big problem, and I think the film authorities need to do something about it. So really, they need to catch up with digital, I mean, a revolution. They need to, I mean, digitize some of these processes so that people, I mean, can go always, I mean, can go to cinema to watch movies, but at the same time, people, especially in cities, like even Wazazat, which is cinema city of Morocco, we don't have any cinemas. There used to be two, but they closed down a long time ago. So in a city that makes a lot of international productions, but also national ones, you don't have access, you know, to the cinema, to the movies, I mean, to watch.  They need to create a digital infrastructure, I mean, for distribution and exhibition, to allow, you know, for people to watch, not just movies made, I mean, like this year and next year, but also the old classics of Moroccan cinema, because some of the gyms of Moroccan cinema were made in the 70s and 80s, and unfortunately for young people today, they are beyond the reach, and a lot of people don't really know that, you know, there was a Moroccan cinema in the 60s and 70s and the following decade. So that is, I mean, something that the Moroccan, I mean, cinema center needs to think about, but also something else that has been really, and I won't, this is my last point, something that has really been bothering a lot of, especially young filmmakers, is the permit system.  So people like Mathebo Hamouche, and there is a section about him, so he's an analytical filmmaker in Morocco, and he, I mean, makes films underground because he can't simply get permission to shoot the kinds of movies that he makes. So that is a big problem. Also for a young Moroccan filmmaker to get established today, it's very difficult because it's conditions that imposed by CCM, like you should make three short movies, three short, I mean, films before you apply for funding, but even when you apply for funding into the production company to back your project and so on, it's very, very difficult, I mean, for young filmmakers. So yeah, there are so many challenges out there, so many problems, and I hope that in the future they will be resolved so that Moroccan cinema is not only made, but also consumed, and especially consumed by, you know, by the national audience as well. Thank you. Well, yeah. Thank you very much. Do you want to come back, William, or? No, no, I was just going to say that we're now, we can move into the questions that are in the Q&A, and I don't know how you want to work through those, or? All right, I've got a question myself which I can ask very briefly. I'm going to ask Nankas to come in and tell because my intro went off and I've lost, and I had to go out and come back. Yeah. So I have, oh no, I've got some questions now, but I've lost a few questions at the top. But it's a quick question, really, which is you talk about, you know, kind of the transnational, the transnational as kind of the conceptual framework as being there. So how does it relate to the national, particularly that in the case of the national, in this case, you've got a complex mixture of groups and languages and ethnicities and so on. So how do you deal with that as a kind of, let us say, a conceptual framework? So that's what I wanted to ask, and then I think we just go to the questions. It's an open question in many ways. Do you want me to begin with, and then, Flo and Jamal? Yeah. I think the transnational as a sort of theoretical framework or an analytical framework, the way in which we've come at that is through the way, largely in which film studies and film theory has engaged with the transnational. And the way in which that draws also on, you know, writing from sociology and other disciplines, it's a sort of interdisciplinary approach, but very much at the heart of that, I think is a sense that film has from its inception been a transnational medium, you know, and films cross borders and boundaries. International co-production is very much a common part of how films are financed and made. But very interestingly, you know, there has been a strong development of an idea of national cinema. You know, national screen agencies are incredibly important in terms of promoting the supposed interests of often a particular vision of what a national cinema should be. What we're interested in and using the transnational as a sort of framework and something that's been written about quite a lot in film studies is that the dialogue that there is between the national and the transnational, the idea that the national doesn't disappear when we think about cinema transnationally. It's about that dynamic between the two and often the tension that exists between the two. And I think that the, an example of the place of diasporic filmmakers in Morocco is a really, really interesting one there and it illustrates that quite well. You know, in the mid-1990s, one of the things that the, that the CESAM, the Moroccan Film Council did to try and sort of kickstart a greater international visibility for films and to increase the quality and the range of films being made was to encourage Moroccans from the diaspora to return and make films with money coming from the Moroccan Film Council. That in itself did provide a sort of, H.M. Lastery talks about it as an electric shock that sort of revitalized Moroccan cinema. And those perspectives are really valuable in terms of the sort of, and the visibility of those filmmakers like Nabil Ayush, for example. But at the same time, that has caused some resentment amongst certain Moroccan filmmakers who are very much based within Morocco and working within Morocco and not looking for international funds who feel that those filmmakers are kind of taking away from the opportunities that they have. And in some ways, you know, we've conducted interviews with some filmmakers who say, well, you know, it's kind of, they're Moroccan filmmakers, but they have a sort of, you know, more of a European perspective, say, on the kind of issues that we're looking at. So there's a tension there between, you know, an idea of a transnational Moroccan cinema and a national. So it's thinking about how those two things work together and also how, for example, you know, Jamal can speak about this much more and more eloquently and more knowledgeably, because this is one of his kind of particular areas that he's worked on. But the idea that Amazigh cinema, which, you know, for a long time was ignored as part of a Moroccan national cinema, has a transnational reach through its distribution online, through the circulation of DVDs and the kind of the films reaching a diasporic audience and reaching a kind of displaced audience within Morocco of Amazigh people who have kind of moved to, say, larger cities outside of their home region, but also transnationally, you know, a kind of connection with a diasporic audience. So there's a really interesting interplay there again between the local and the global. And I think the final thing I'd say there as well is that the transnational I think is a kind of, it's a more accommodating way of thinking about that dynamic and that flow between, you know, between the global and the local than simply thinking in terms of globalization, because I think it kind of is more attuned to the dynamics of power as well that are at play. So that's, I don't know, do you want to add anything to that Jamal or Flo? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, Moroccan cinema, I mean, in Tamaze, I mean, the Amazigh, 44 Amazigh cinema, I mean, it was born in the early 1990s and it was born in Algeria at the same time, but like from production to exhibition, I mean, it was really like post-national in a way.  So when those movies were being made, like first ones were made almost underground, and then, you know, where the money was coming from, but also like when you look at the movies themselves, like first movie, I mean, the time of the war of the Golden Woman really starts with a scene where, you know, I mean, the protagonist of the movie, you know, is arriving in his village in southwest in Seuss and is coming back, you know, from France. So like that journey, I mean, like from the global to the local, and then from the local to the global, is very there in terms of thematics, you know, of these movies, but also it's production, like needlework, it's exhibition needlework. They were really very diverse and they were really, I mean, cross-cutting between Morocco and France, between the like Moroccan, you know, Moroccan Imazi and the Moroccan Berber community, but also the Amazigh, I mean, diaspora in Europe and elsewhere.  Thank you. Maybe, yes? One more thing. If you look at the team that goes with a movie these days, it's even more so, more more the case. I think Ayos Carmen had a star from Argentina, is it? Anyway, Argentina, okay, all sorts of funding from elsewhere, but Argentina, the music was mixed in New York. I mean, it just goes all over the map and how then do you qualify such a movie that exceeds its borders constantly in this place and it's a play between the local and the global? Thank you. That's great. So I'm inviting Nagus to ask the first 14 questions and then we can, and then I can take the ones coming up. For that thing, yes. I was looking for a question from Maula Hammond to teachers cinema that she says that she's a big fan of Fahouzi bin Saidi's love to teach his film a thousand months. And this is part of due to the way he theorizes his own filmmaking practices in interesting and accessible ways and thinking by constructions of a powerful gaze. Could you point Maula towards other directors who theorize their practices so clearly? In her studies of Arabic literature, she thinks of Morocco as a powerhouse of Arabic literary theory. So does this extend to cinema as well? Any one of you speakers would like to comment? Yes. I think that Moroccan cinema in recent years has provided a lot of opportunities for filmmakers from the region to come because of a number of festivals that are in the existing country to more than 50 festivals, a lot of them supported by the Moroccan cinema center. And also in terms of innovation, filmmakers like Hisham al-Azri, he's a bit like a Fahouzi bin Saidi. He makes film but also he's like experimenting and theorizing his practice as he makes those movies. So his movies are very fun to watch, but also they are very raw and they invite a lot like the spectator to be very, very alert, but also really to start thinking about the film itself as a new way. So it's not like they are not finished products that you just watch for a story or whatever. They are also very reflexive kinds of pieces of work. So yeah, I don't think that Morocco is the center of film theory in terms of literary theory at the moment, but there is film criticism is happening here. So there is a lot of healthy levels of production in terms of books and articles published by local scholars on Moroccan cinema. Lots of conferences are organized, but I wouldn't claim that it's like the help of film criticism. A powerhouse of the... I think I probably add to that that if you get the chance and if you enjoyed Ben Saidi's earlier work, try and get to see Volubilis most recent film because it's absolutely fantastic. It was released a couple of years ago and scooped most of the prizes at the National Festival in Tangier, but it's a really fantastic film in terms of... We consider it to be very transnational in terms of the way in which it plays with cinematic references from popular Egyptian cinema to Hitchcock. Places have been a very local context in terms of its engagement with Moroccan politics and issues facing a younger generation. So if you can find a copy of that film, I'd really... Name the film again, please. Volubilis. We can supply a list of kind of recommended films. Yes, actually there have been some questions saying that could you. There are some obviously amongst the audience who are new to the topic that almost three or four that you recommend people start with. And another important... I think in terms of filmmaking as kind of an investigation of Morocco's film history, I think the films of Ali Esafi are really important as well in terms of... And again, we can provide some examples there. He's been very instrumental in sort of revalorizing the importance of early experimental documentary filmmaking in Morocco in terms of rediscovering and renovating, restoring those films. He also... His films are kind of an exploration of not only of those important documentary films but also a kind of question of what is Moroccan cinema. So again, we can put some recommendations to Ali's work as well. Very good. And the language, some people ask about the language of... Well, it's in Darija now, which is the Moroccan dialect, or it is in one of the three variants of Tamazirt. Yeah, we should have questions about that, yeah. And Amin Ben-Amarawi said that he had it subtitled in French but not in Arabic. And he said people understood. And there is... He said... He claims that he is building on the old... Very old this time, films of his childhood, which were Hindi films in Hindi, not necessarily always dubbed or subtitled. And that everybody, and that this is in the film, this is also one of the films, by the way, that I would completely recommend. And that is within reach, within the US, for instance, and in Europe. And he talks about the fact that it becomes a celebration that you don't need language in some ways. It's very... It's fascinating. Yeah. Yes. You're mute. Okay. I'm so sorry. I was going to say like the Indians in the Marble of Old, in Middle East, and I mean, it didn't matter. Nobody even really paused to think it was in Hindi. So you would love this film, Nargis, because you will see the whole audience dancing with the people on screen, you know, and singing, even though they don't understand what they sing. Fantastic. So there are a few questions which you have asked Nargis and you have answered, which in relation to the language, what language the films are in, and lots of questions around Amazigh films, which I think Jamal has answered in his talk. So there's an interesting question around the... For example, if... Can you talk about some of the challenges facing Amazigh cinema in the age of globalization and maybe even before? And then in relation to that is... Yeah. So because you talked about digital disruptions, you used that term. So perhaps you could explore that a bit more. And then there is a question there about social media and film streaming networks like Netflix and Film Now, do they constitute a challenge? So do you consider these big behemoths of film production as being some examples of disruptions? And then we'll go to other questions. Thank you. Go ahead. And I was going to say, do you want to start with the first question I think was more about the challenges for Amazigh cinema? Yeah, it's facing a lot of challenges. So basically it started as a video cinema in 1990s. It was not funded by the government like the rest of Moroccan cinema. So therefore films were made on very small budgets and they were distributed locally in Agadir and the region initially, but also in diaspora in France. And then cinema really started to get a little bit more professional. So there were more productions, but also there was even a star system for this kind of vernacular cinema. And then in the early 2000s, what happened is that piracy almost killed the cinema. So because this cinema relied on returns on the copies of film sold so that the production company would make more movies and so on. So in lack with the absence of any help from any, like from the government, it was difficult for the production companies to survive in the early 2000s.  So they closed shop because they could not, I mean, survive. So films as soon as they were made, they would be in the markets. They would be everywhere. But then one person would buy a scene, I mean, like the original copy, the authentic copy and then they would make lots of copies of films and work people. And then you would also find these movies being sold everywhere in the country. So the production model simply, I mean, was disrupted by piracy in the early 2000s. Then in 2009, it was this new development in Morocco.  And then we need the really to teach language. We need to incorporate it into the media and so on to a TV channel. Okay. Thomas TV channel was established into in late 2009. And it has been helping, I mean, some of these film actors and filmmakers to make movies because as a TV channel, it has a budget. And then they are making a lot of movies for, I mean, for, for distribution. Now, more recently, what's been happening is that a lot of films are made and distributed only on YouTube. Okay. So a lot of these production companies, they rely on returns like ad returns, like advertising on YouTube, in order to survive and make movies. So that is, that has been really, I mean, kind of like the latest development in terms of Amazon cinema and the way he's trying to survive on a stage of digital disruption. Yes. And what about funding? There are a couple of questions about government funding. Is that something that is openly available or just comes with conditions? You write a scenario. Yes, it is. The CCM has a commission that looks at scripts. Evaluates the scripts. and then attributes, funding or not. And then during the development, there are three or four tranches, I don't remember three. Oh, yeah, four. And then you get the money as you provide evidence that you're doing what you said you were doing. And basically the CCM is a co-producer of most Moroccan films. And as a result of that. And Jamal mentioned before, Nadia Boumoushu was a filmmaker who works entirely outside of the system for precisely those reasons. Because he, I mean, inevitably within that context, there's also an element, I think, of self-censorship amongst certain filmmakers. There are kind of certain topics that they know and red lines that they know that they shouldn't cross because they just won't get the films kind of approved and receive the funding from this CCM. So Nadia is someone who sort of very clearly placed himself outside of that because he didn't want to compromise the politics of his films. And was someone who used the digital tools at his disposal. So he went direct to YouTube and Vimeo. He subtitled his films, his first film, My Max and Me. He subtitled that in English and distributed that online and was capturing tens of thousands of views, more than any Moroccan documentary filmmaker could hope to get if they were sort of trying to go through theatrical release. And to the point where his most recent film, Amosu, which again is another film I'd really, really recommend if you can get to see it, you see that film, whereby at the National Festival just before the pandemic caused lockdown in Morocco as well, there was a whole question as to whether the film was going to be even be allowed to be screened at the National Festival. And in the end, there was a kind of sense that the film was allowed to be screened in part because a kind of calculation was made by the CCM and by the state that there would be more sort of negative and more negative impact if that film wasn't allowed to be screened. But I think Nadia is an example of someone who's really sort of like, who has looked for alternative distribution networks to not compromise his politics. And actually, it has been able to find a space and find an audience. And that was precisely one of the things in researching the book that we were interested in. Where are those alternative spaces? And how do filmmakers reach their audience? Because the possibilities are there in a way like never before, but that doesn't mean that you can reach that audience, you can find that audience because it's also about the audience knowing that that film is there, right? I think that comes back to something you were asking about kind of the major streamers, the Netflixes and so forth. I mean, the point there is that those are, Morocco is not alone in trying to work out how it navigates that kind of, negotiates that relationship with the new online majors like Netflix, for example. I think that there was a company called ICFLIX who wanted to kind of build themselves as the Netflix of the Arab world who seemed like they were going to be investing in Moroccan productions and this was gonna be an alternative. That really kind of crashed and burned and certain Moroccan filmmakers had a bad experience in terms of what they felt was being guaranteed to them in terms of production and distribution. I think that the reality of Netflix as in many other countries is that they are the kind of global, dominant kind of superpower of streaming. They will come in and try and capture an audience but one of the difficulties they have is that their sort of first is their kind of pricing model because the kind of pricing model that they have excludes a large part of the Moroccan audience who are not gonna be able to afford that subscription and who perhaps are looking for content that Netflix doesn't actually offer. This is the kind of classic experience of the sort of so-called Nollywood model, the entrepreneurial model that is entirely driven by kind of looking for its audience and in which it finds itself outside of that dynamic but yeah, I think there are issues around, again, the gatekeepers are still there and it's a question of how we can reach their audience. Yes, because you made a big mark on YouTube, I think probably needs to step in and I'm probably more accessible, you know, buying the films from that. Anyway, it is great. May I add something? Yeah, of course. Lamia Shraibi, who is one of those amazing transnational producers who is in Casablanca and has two companies, one in Casablanca, one in Paris, is right now co-producing with somebody in Beirut, in Cairo, and I don't remember where else, is co-producing a series that is going to be made for TV very much on the Netflix model or the Amazon Prime model for Heisham Lathry, who is going to do something he's never done before, which is a series with a mixture of genres. There'll be somebody, it's the story of someone who crosses the, tried to immigrate via a sea and then ends up being haunted by seven dead people who died during the voyage and as you can imagine, it goes all over the place. But I find that very interesting that Lamia Shraibi is saying, okay, so we don't have Netflix right now, but let's see what the Arab world could do. And she is actually now more and more interested in having a sort of pan-Arab or pan-African system of co-production. That's very interesting. There is a question here, which I think is quite interesting because it relates to this idea of transnationalism. And the question is whether transnationalism brings about a certain disconnect between Moroccan art, including cinema production and between the locals and the local cultures and norms and the Moroccan public. Could the move from VHS to be sent into local villages to online exhibition and transnational collaboration have brought about the deterioration of the groundedness of Moroccan cinema and contributed to its disconnect. So it might be interesting to kind of respond to this question. And again, the question also the person who's asking is, wants to know about the political context. How does that affect what is produced and so on? So a lot there to talk about if you want to talk about it. Who wants to go first? You go first, Will. OK, so I think that one of the points that was being made early there about that potential disconnect goes back to that point I think I made earlier about the relationship with the diaspora. I think that there is a tendency sometimes to feel that particularly some of the films that are getting from within the filmmaking community in Morocco that some of the films that are getting visibility from international festivals that are able to attract festival funding or money from Doha are films that actually circulate in a different kind of context and in a different world almost of the international festival circuit, these are autoled productions and films that are in some way disconnected. I think there can be an element of truth in that I also think Fosy Vensades and last year examples of filmmakers whose films travel well but who I think also are very much kind of they have a what I would call a rooted transnationalism. They're very much connected in terms of themes, language approach and sort of these are not diasporic filmmakers who haven't been back to Morocco for like 20 years or something. There's very much a kind of connection there. So I think there's an element of truth within that but it speaks also to a bigger issue about how and Jamal has written about this before talking about Moroccan cinema as a divided house. So how do you bridge that gap between the filmmakers who are resolutely local who look for funds only within a kind of national context either from the CESAM from private investors who are few or from TV. How do you kind of bridge that gap in terms of getting them to maybe collaborate creatively with those filmmakers who are moving more circulating internationally the kind of filmmakers I talk about as CINESTA Passage. But also how do we kind of how do those films that see themselves as resolutely national but may have a potential to reach an international audience. How do those filmmakers actually have a sense that there is someone they can trust and there's a network that they actually understand to reach that international audience. So there are kind of that it's I think there's there's an element of truth in that and Jamal you know I know you've you've talked about this. I guess that's a question that I mean the film that you recommended earlier Volubilis by Faisal Bisseidio was trying to I mean really to solve like how do you make a film that is of very high quality attracts you know first of all attention so goes on first of all circuits and circulates internationally and at the same time gets enough interest and enough audience I mean attention in Morocco. So I guess the problem is still there it has not been really I mean resolved so they're like Moroccan cinema is remains like a divided house so there are movies that are made or like for a national audience and these films are very rarely you know I mean very rarely attract the attention of festival organizers not just abroad but also in Morocco because they are seen as like popular cinema cinema that is commercial and made like for film covers rather than cinema that is made to be appreciated for its aesthetic you know kind of value but I mean the problem is that CCM like the I mean the enabler of Moroccan cinema in terms of funding really encourage that policy from the early 2000s so they said that you know filmmakers are going to get funding like especially a second time if their previous movies like had attracted festival attention so had been to good festivals abroad or had really done well you know at the box office I mean in Morocco so and then they are still like I mean following that kind of policy like we're going to give money to certain people because we know that their films do well at the box office at home and then we're going to give money to these other guys this other tribe because they have go to Cannes, they go to Berlin they go to these places so that is a really I mean something that is also encouraged by the National Film Council but it needs to say it's really a divide that needs to be bridged in order to create more alternatives and more diversity in the field of Moroccan cinema Yeah so about the political what was the politics effect film I guess there are red lines in Morocco you cannot talk against the monarchy you cannot talk about Islam and you cannot question the it's called l'intégrité du territoire meaning the territorial borders and that includes western Sahara so that's something you're not supposed to put in question also more recently when the Islamist the party justice et développement the Islamist party came into power all of a sudden there was all that talk about doing clean art and that's what it meant that you could not really have well sex but sex is not necessarily something that would happen visibly on the Moroccan screen anyway but there are things that every any suggestion would be completely criticized to the point that at some point we had seen we have met filmmakers who told us oh we were kind of happy because the minute the parliament would say ooh this film is terribly unclean and shouldn't be shown then that created a buzz and then everybody would of course rush to the cinema to see it so it was in fact a wonderful way of publicizing cinema in its paradoxical fashion so yes politics do have a lot of weight could I just add one more thing in relation to what Jamal was saying and this kind of question of the competing priorities for the one other thing to add to that is inward investment by which I mean Morocco is a production service location which is highly lucrative but which doesn't really benefit the creative development of many filmmakers and it provides a source of income and employment for certain filmmakers who become part of the crew or maybe as fixers or locations but all of those big American European productions that are coming to shoot in Morocco for the facilities and the climate and they bring all their heads of departments and their directors and it's not really a kind of positive exchange for Moroccan filmmakers but it is highly important to the film industry and highly lucrative and so what you tend to find when Moroccan cinema is being promoted internationally at key international markets like the European film market in Berlin or the Moroccan cinema stand that is there is sort of saying come and shoot in Morocco get your tax rebate you know but the Moroccan filmmakers are not always promoted front and centre and that's understandable because this is kind of it's the film business right and there's that kind of tension between art and commerce but it is also that's another I think difficult tension that particularly the CCM as the kind of national screen agency has trouble resolving Somebody just picked up on something that Florence said that you know the moment that there's a governmental disapproval of something obviously that increases box office resources somebody is questioning that can they get a license for release if it is not approved by the government so at what point do they draw the line when something is not screened Well they do deliver the services so they can also not deliver them but you need to understand if the CCM has already invested money and could produce the film chances are and followed it the whole way chances are none of this will happen we will get through yeah So there is a question in several questions around censorship by the CCM but I think you have answered that kind of directly and indirectly but there's another question in relation to the production and the growth of MSc cinema and can you read it in relation to the official recognition of MSc culture and identity in the Moroccan state over the last 20 years do you see that as kind of evolving together and maybe a question going back to the transnational question what effect do these transnational connections and interventions and practices and so on how do they affect the aesthetic and the kind of the language or the visual kind of feeling of the films produced in Morocco so two questions in one as we are kind of running close to time Jamal Amazir expert go for it I think in terms of MSc cinema what's been happening over the last 20 years in terms of political recognition of Tamazir as an official language in the constitution of 2011 so now in Morocco we have two official languages so Arabic and Tamazir although Tamazir has not been like implemented as an official language in terms of media in terms of teaching and so on teaching for example is not yet generalized so they say that next year they are going to generalize it but I guess in terms of filmmaking for the first time in Moroccan history in 2007 National Film Festival in 2008 invited an Amazir filmmaker to come and screen his film with his film Tilela and then for his next film he did get any funding from CCN but for his next film he got funding and then more filmmakers like Amraoui and then also filmmakers like Talha Hadid and others from CCN although there are complaints that there is still a lot of discrimination against Amazir films so every year they use only one film or so that gets funding and the other films are all in Barija so there is still a lot of way to go in that regard so I think that the recognition of language the recognition of culture by the government has helped Amazir filmmakers feel that they are part of the part of the national cinema but also that they are welcome to make productions without worrying about being censored about going to jail and so on but in terms of censorship I think I need to add something it depends of course on the political environment but it also depends on the man or the woman yet at the top of CCN for many years like from 2003 to 2014 I guess so there was a man at the top of CCN he died recently unfortunately he was an intellectual but also very charismatic and new people and he used that power to protect filmmakers from censorship from political parties in the government or even like from the regime itself so it was somebody who defended the film of expression and allowed people like Aisha Masri to make movies talking about King talking about the Ministry of the Interior talking about all sorts of taboos but then that changed Islam became the main part in the coalition in 2011 of course they went after Nordin Seil and removed him from CCN finally in 2014 and put a man in his place by the name of Sari Fasil Fihli and then the number of cases of censorship just has gone up like even sometimes for movies that they received some funding from CCN so Aisha Masri, Nordin Ayush and the censorship of their movies or sometimes of one of the instalments of funding that goes towards the production of their movies so you had a good will of one person at the top of like in a key position but Jamal without going into Morocco-Moroccan stories it seems to me that Sari Fasil Fihli was imposed upon by the Minister above him, no? I can't quite fight the game under the Ministry of Communication now the Minister of Culture that's true we seem to be running out of time but there were a few questions that maybe we could talk to in very brief ways the question around Moroccan cinema or Moroccan cinemas and then whether there is something that we could call Moroccan cinema and the part of Arab cinema is it African and so on so all these questions engage with the importance of the topic of work that can be called people who work around Moroccan cinema is really exciting but these are very big questions I guess and we are really running out of time and really apologise for my internet which has knocked me out for the few minutes and I apologise to the brilliant questions coming from the audience and Marcus is the brilliant person and he is the documenter yes and Aki does usually yes because you might like to actually have some of these really very interesting questions here we'll copy and paste them for you and we can send back the list of we'd love that yes please there have been several questions saying could you please recommend half a dozen tops absolutely I'd like to find them to students to look at and discuss but this has been such a fascinating book and I think the format would give them to help the three of you it kind of looked really well and you know loads of issues and questions and understandings of the Moroccan context so thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us and happy good evening afternoon whatever thank you it's an absolute pleasure really lovely to have you thanks and thanks to all the audience ok bye all bye thank you bye bye


Mr. President, we hear you would have saved $28,000 if you had filed your taxes under this new proposal, Sarah. I haven't figured that out. I'm not going to take some questions on the sub-department meetings later. But what do you think about that? I don't know who worked that out, but I think that just points out for everyone, advantage of the new tax system. Even for the middle class, they don't save that much. Well, they also don't pay as much. You're sitting in this chair. Yes? Twenty-three times. How do you view prospects for your business? Mr. President, will you recognize the end of the accepted 242? I'm going to take questions on this subject at the departure statements at lunch. First, Mr. President, I have the courage to put it forward. We consider it an activity. I speak as a former Secretary of the Treasury. Somebody made this incentive to me as a President. They said this was a decision maker, as you can see it. But then you can turn it to no, and then you can turn it to maybe, and then you really have made a forceful decision. I decided this was probably the proper room for it. Why don't we turn it to no? Yes, as far as I'm concerned. I repeated to that of the Majesty, this courage and what he's been doing, and the progress that he has made. We want to be very helpful in continuing this peace process. Do you have an agenda here, some things that you would like to bring up? I'd like to thank you very much for the privilege of meeting and discussing it. I had a chance yesterday to spend some time with the Secretary of State to discuss many aspects of the phase in which we are in this critical juncture in terms of the future. And of course, a chance for me to present our case, which I had a chance to do against it, without taking too much of your time. But I would like to say that maybe the rules of what we are right now, as far as I'm concerned, my country, the government, began almost 30 years ago, in terms of getting it done. I had to get up there, right? Moose coverage. It's embarrassing, because all of this is around the world. Our scenes from the American Revolution, when we defeated their armies. I think that is a York touted, supposed to be for the surrender. So, didn't know any way to keep him from looking. He was pretty jovial.