Have you ever killed a bear - or Becoming Jamila

At a glance

Have you ever killed a bear - or Becoming Jamila, is a 2015 Lebanese movie, directed by Marwa Arsanios, and starring Marwa Arsanios. with a runtime of 25 minutes.

Overview

Have You Ever Killed a Bear — or Becoming Jamila is an Egyptian-Algerian video art piece that uses the archive of Cairo's Al-Hilal magazine from the 1950s and 1960s as its starting point for an inquiry into Jamila Bouhired, the iconic Algerian freedom fighter. An actress assigned to embody her role presents the magazine's covers to camera, opening a meditation on how Jamila was simultaneously celebrated, appropriated, and marginalized. Moving between cinema, print culture, and performance, the work examines the history of socialist projects in Egypt and anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, asking what it truly means to become a political icon — and at what cost.

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