Inside Paul Bowles, and his relation with some of The Moroccan writers and friends. Featuring Paul Bowles, Mohamed Choukri, Mohamed Mrabet, Abdelwahaid Boulaich, Mohammed Temsamani...

At the beginning of the 70s, Jean Genet is in Tangier, he is in his sixties and he no longer writes. He lives in the El Minza hotel, a palace, where he spends entire days reading, smoking and sleeping (he takes Nembutal, a barbiturate used as a sleeping pill). He only goes out at the beginning of the afternoon to have a coffee with milk in one of the bars of Petit Socco. He sometimes meets the young Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri there. Their discussion is banal, friendly. Sometimes they talk about literature. Genet no longer writes, but is still inhabited by it.  

Under the benevolent shadow of Jean Genet, buried in Morocco,  this film is a dialogue between the living and the dead, an invitation to bring those realms together, between silent humanist revolt and poetic elegy. A family takes loving care of a white tomb, in a cemetery with a view of the sea. We are in Larache, south of Tangier, where Jean Genet lived the last ten years of his life.  Today, the writer is finally home, among his own. And for the locals of the city, he is a legend.Few of them actually knew him. Still fewer have read him. Most all have reinvented him for themselves. Everyone has their own story to tell. But they all agree on onething: “Jon Joney” valued them. He was on their side. Thesesimple, poor, quite frankly invisible individuals form the voiceless and futureless people of Morocco. Living incarnations of the characters in hiswork, they now keep watch over his grave.

"A collaboration with writer Lucy Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been. En route from the airport to the city center, we found ourselves amazed by the landscape outside of the car windows; a massive construction project under way in all directions. While not in itself unusual, we were by struck dumb by the epic scale and seemingly incomprehensible plan of the development and were drawn to return together to this puzzling zone".

In the mid-1950s and beyond, Tangier became a haven for artists, poets, and intellectuals. Drawn by the influence of Paul Bowles, members of the Beat Generation flocked to this northern Moroccan city, seeking inspiration, a space to complete their creative endeavors, and a taste of the Moroccan dream. Despite the significant contributions of Moroccan artists and intellectuals to this cultural milieu, Western narratives often marginalized their presence, reducing them to mere shadows or omitting them altogether. This film serves as a tribute to this profound intersection of dreams and dislocated realities.

Even though his musical and literary oeuvre is neither large nor very well known apart from his bestseller-novel «The Sheltering Sky», the American composer and author Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was a man of immense charisma and influence. When he moved to Tangier (Morocco) in 1949, it was a city divided into zones, a sanctuary for artists, writers and the wealthy to do as they pleased without fear of prosecution. Soon, Paul‘s friends and peers from America began visiting: Tennessee Williams,Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs and many others. The Neo-Lost Generation, the Beats, the Hippies all searched him out, lured by the mysterious and magical world he depicted in his books. But that was only one side. Though Paul Bowles never hid his homosexuality, he was married to the lesbian writer Jane Bowles. What attracted them despite their extremely different personalities was a shared worldview: that one must travel to the point of no return in order to find salvation. Based on an exclusive series of interviews with Bowles shortly before his death and anecdotes provided by his friends and collaborators, the film tells of a daring and visionary life and a relationship shaped by a codependency that went way beyond sexuality. Among the participants are Gore Vidal, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Waters, Ruth Fainlight, Edmund White, William Burroughs, Francis Bacon and many others.  

In April of 2013, American singer Patti Smith travels to the grave of French writer Jean Genet in Larache, Morocco. She brings him three stones, which she collected for him over 30 years ago. "There are places of yearning. There are promises that accompany us our entire lives. And there are friends, who listen and ask questions. Frieder Schlaich and Patti Smith are linked by just such a friendship. Tangier is the place, and the promise is one that was made to Jean Genet. Patti Smith has been carrying the secret around with her for many years, inside a matchbox. When chance creates a situation that brings everything together, she is able to honour her promise. Frieder accompanies Patti through the city he feels so close to, and she speaks of that which is close to her. At the cemetery they encounter a young boy who carries the spell of the story further. Two rolls of black and white film, a Bolex and the few minutes before a live performance limit the shooting time. Having the necessary concentration and knowledge of one another is what sets the film apart. The view across the ocean lies in its limitation.“ (Berlinale Shorts 2014).

"Tangier attracts you...And you are attracted to it,as if it grabbed you to remain inside you". "I am born in Tangier and I never go from Tangier. So I do n’t like to go from Tangier. I want to stay in Tangier".