Mohamed Zinet

Mohamed Zinet Arabic محمد زينت is an Algerian actor and director born January 16 1932 in the Casbah of Algiers in Algeria and died April 10 1995 in Bondy in France Born in 1932 in Algiers Mohamed Zinet developed a passion for theater at a very young age He led an amateur troupe called ElManar ElDjazairi The Algerian Flambeau and in 1947 in Paris he presented an adaptation of Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Molière in the Wagram room Officer of the National Liberation Army ALN during the war of independence he was seriously injured during a mission then transported to Tunis where the artistic troupe of the National Liberation Front FLN was created which constituted the core of the future Algerian National Theater During his stay in Tunis he played the role of Lakhdar in Le Cadavre Encerclé by Kateb Yacine directed by JeanMarie Serreau After a first internship in 1959 at the Berliner Ensemble in the GDR Mohammed Zinet did a second at the Kammerspiele in Munich in 1961 The following year he stayed in Paris where he was hired by JeanMarie Serreau for the Scandinavian tour of Les Bonnes de Jean Genet and Amédée or How to Get Rid of It by Eugène Ionesco Returning to Algiers in 1964 he participated in the creation of the company Casbah Films with Yacef Saâdi and was an assistant on Les Mains Libres by Ennio Lorenzini 1964 and La Bataille dAlgiers by Gillo Pontecorvo 1966 He was also in demand as an actor in Monangambée by Sarah Maldoror 1968 and Les Trois Cousins as well as Les Ajoncs by René Vautier 1970 Finally he is the author of an unpublished play entitled Tibelkachoutine The Man With Twigs in Berber created in 1953 testifying to his great admiration for Charlie Chaplin and silent cinema A play presented in Tunisia which he planned to adapt for the cinema but the film will never see the light of day Made in 1971 Tahya Ya Didou is the only feature film by director Mohamed Zinet In this film he presents his vision of independent Algeria with realism and poetry by discovering the Casbah and white Algiers pearl of the Mediterranean in a poetic dialogue told by his friend the poet Himoud Brahimi The result an unclassifiable comedy full of life and fantasy freshness and poetry which gradually became cult for film buffs which was not initially to the taste of the sponsors of the municipality of Algiers who were expecting a documentary tourism in the capital Result Tahya Ya Didou never had a real release The film of which a film copy was eventually found was restored and digitized in 2016 Subsequently throughout the 1970s Mohamed Zinet played among others in Le Bougnoul by Daniel Moosmann 1974 Dupont Lajoie by Yves Boisset 1974 La Vie Devant Soi by Moshe Mizrahi 1977 Robert et Robert by Claude Lelouch 1978 Le Coup De Sirocco by Alexandre Arcady 1979 etc Mohamed Zinet died on April 10 1995 in Bondy Paris region after several years of hospitalization Mohamed Zinet is buried in the ElKettar cemetery in Algiers