Born 31st October 1947 at Tlemcen (Algeria)
VGIK Diploma – cinema direction (fiction) in 1976
(Moscow Institute of Cinema – Mikhail Romm’s studio)
Jewish on his mother’s side and of Spanish origine on his father’s.
Forced to leave Algeria for security reasons end of June 1993.
ISRAEL / 2012 – 2019
‘Israel, the Forbidden journey’’, his new movie will be finished in beginning 2019.
This movie is composed of 4 parts (2.30 each) : Kippour / Hanoukka / Pourim / Passover
Written, filmed and directed by Jean Pierre Lledo
Produced in Israel by Ziva Postec Movies and in France by Naouel Films.
The Chief editor is Ziva Postec, Chief-Editor of ‘Shoah’ (the film by Claude Lanzmann).
In July 2008 JP LLEDO’s latest film Algeria, Unspoken stories, is selected at the Jerusalem International Film Festival. Lledo hesitates but finally accepts the invitation. Indeed, it was the first time he went to Israel, despite the many invitations of his maternal uncle, arrived from Algeria in 1961.
After this trip followed by many others, JPL understands that he did not know everything about the history of this country and the Judaism he had completely rejected.
For two years, he reads, studies, and travels to Israel.
He then has the desire to make a film to confront his old prejudices to the reality of Israel …
France / 2008-1994
In 1993, like many other Algerian intellectuals and artists, the film maker, Jean-Pierre LLEDO, under threat from Islamic terrorists, is obliged to leave his country and move to France.
Showing his films in various French cities, he saw rapidly that one feeling united the vast majority of spectators who came to debate with him.
Whether they were of Berber, Arabic, Jewish or European origin, they all expressed a true attachment to Algeria. That Algeria from which many of them also feel exiled, the end of the French colonial system in 1962 having had independence as its immediate consequence, but also the exodus of more than a million men and women who were born there.
Choosing the documentary as his means of expression, JP Lledo renews his links with a suppressed memory, that of the coexistence of three Algerian communities of Muslim, Jewish and Christian origin, with the one obsessive question: «Algeria became independent, Why was she unable to be fraternal?»
With this question as a starting point, and with the firm will to exclude none of the sensitivies, J.-P. LLEDO produced his «Trilogy of Exile», revisiting a Franco-Algerian history until then stuck in multiple caricatures and stereotypes : An Algerian Dream (03), Algeria(s), my Phantoms (04) and Algeria, Unspoken Stories (07).
- 2007 – Algeria, Unspoken Stories 2.36 / 35 mm, colour / Format: 1/85
Forbidden in Algeria since June 2007.
Release in theaters in France and in Switzerland, in 2008.
Production : Naouel Flims (Algeria), ENTV (Algeria), Mille et Une Productions (France)
Distribution : Colifilms.
Festivals : 2007, Toronto. Amiens. 2008 : Fribourg. Montréal. Tribeca–New York. Tétouan. Beyrouth. Tarifa. Jérusalem. Cambridge. Vancouver. Frankfurt. Stockholm…
- 2004 – Algeria my Phantoms 1.46, colour, Beta Num.
Production: Naouel Flims (Algeria) and Iskra (France). Released in 2005.
Festivals : FIPA-2005, Mention Spéciale à la 5ème Biennale des films du Monde arabe, à Paris. Festival Méditerranée Bruxelles. La Rochelle. Ecrans docs, Arcueil, Festival des films du monde arabe de New York, Montréal, Namur.
- 2003 – An Algerian Dream 110mn, colour, 35mn. Cinema and TV France 2.
Production: Naouel Films (Algeria) – Maha Productions (France) and Tarantula (Belgium)- France 2 Cinema. Distribution: Vision Group – Released 2003-04.
Festivals : First prize for Documentary Film, Montreal, Canada 2004, San Sebastien, Namur, Cambridge, Vancouver, New-York, Rio de Janeiro, Bratislava, Paris, Locarno, Ouguadougou, Rabat, Oujda, Carthage.
- 2001 – JEAN PELEGRI, ALIAS YAHIA EL HADJ – 59’, Video, Production: Jakaranda. TV.
- 1998 – LISETTE VINCENT, An Algerian woman – 1.40 colour, digital video. TV.
Production : Io Production and Image Plus.
Festival : Lussas, France 1999.
- 1996 – L’OASIS DE LA BELLE DE MAI – 59m, colour, video. TV.
- 1994 – ALGERIAN CHRONICLES.
Produced by Naouel Films and Audience Production and Planete. Distribution : Planete TV.
Festival : ‘Vues sur les Docs’ , June 1995, Marseille, France.
ALGERIA/ 1977-1993
Jean-Pierre Lledo was born in Tlemcen, Algeria, and studied film directing at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow (1970 – 1976).
He began his career in Algeria (1977), directing two fiction features, ‘The Empire of Dreams’ (82) and ‘Lights’ (Lumières)(89), and a dozen short and medium-length documentaries, including The see is blue, the sky too (90).
CINEMA: 2 Fictions
- 1989 LUMIERES -1.50, colour, 35 mn. CAAIC
Long quest of a director specializing in command films, who after a depression rediscovers his family, his neighborhood the Casbah, himself.
Held, for some time, by his Islamist neighbor, it is especially the meeting with an old projectionist rendering to him a censored history of cinema and of Algeria, which helps him to moult, and to accept his own fantasies, incarnated by Marilyn Monroe.
Tribute in the form of winks to many directors, from Chaplin to Fellini …
Final scene: he turns his first fiction film, autobiographical … The machine to produce fog works badly, the film crew coughs …
The two main roles are played by Mohamed Fellag and Mustapha Halo. With also Doudja, Anne Turolla…
Shot summer 88 – so 2 months before the “events of October 88” – and ended summer 89 while the new Constitution allows pluralism and the Islamist party that has just been accredited immediately shows aggression, this film was never released, the state-owned company was dissolved. The author obtains from the Italian Embassy the payment of a copy to the laboratory of Rome, Microstampa, chosen by Algeria since 1982.
A copy was also drawn on the occasion of the Year of Algeria in France in 2003.
Festivals : Carthage. Djebellina (Sicile). Montréal. Cannes-Premiers films…
- 1982 L’EMPIRE DES REVES – 120,m, colour, 35mn ONCIC
An obstinate director who wants to find the Algiers of his childhood, faces the “Hollywood” fantasies of his characters, non-professionals all hoping to become “someone else”, at least the time of a film … Travel in megalomania …
All the characters of non-professionals are interpreted by actors whose main ones are Mohamed Ifrah, Sid Ali Kouiret and Fettouma Ousliha.
The ONCIC directed by the filmmaker Lakhdar Hamina sabotages the promotion of this film abroad and is not sent to the Festivals that ask for it or even selects it (for example in Valencia, Spain. The film is also denied to Jean Lacouture, who presents each month on French TV, a film of the ” Third World ”. He was presented only 3 years later, in the only Festival of Damascus: he received the Prize of male interpretation (1985).
The Year of Algeria in France took a copy in 2003.
12 Documentaries
- 1993 Femmes en Crue – 26mn, produced by ANAF, distributed in 1993.
- 1993 Bateau Perdu -26mn produced by ANAF, not distributed on Algerian television. Special mention at the Auxerre Festival 1995.
- 1992 Les Ancêtres – Son Père crache – Entre la Vie et la Mort – 52mn and 2x26mn produced by ANAF.
- 1990 LA MER EST BLEUE, LE CIEL AUSSI – 60mn, produced by ENTV (Algerian Television). Silver key at the Lorquin Festival in 1991. Shortlisted at the Festival of psy-video in Paris in the same year. Censured by Algerian television for two years, broadcast on 1st June 1992.
- 1986 JONCTION et RENAISSANCE – 30mn and 26mn, colour, 35mn. Golden Tanit at the Carthage Festival in1988. Distributed in 1992.
- 1984 LES CASBAH NE S’ASSIEGENT PAS et MERIDIEN 0 – 30 mn and 26mn, colour, 35mn
- 1978 LE FLAMBEAU BRULERA TOUJOURS 30 mn colour, 16mn. Censured by the television, never broadcast.
- COMMENT CA VA? 60mn, colour, 35mn. Film censured, the negatives have ‘’disappeared’’.
SCENARIOS
All the above films were written by the author.
The Mountain of Baya, full-length fiction by Azzedine Meddour (distributed in France from December 1997) was co-written by JP Lledo.
CINEMATOGRAPHIC CRITIC ARTICLES
– Algerian press: many articles on the Algerian cinema, and its dysfunctions … (the critical articles on the state of the Algerian cinema are accepted by the press, even before the pluralism of the year 1989)
– ‘The 2 screens ‘: collaborator of the Algerian magazine of Cinema and TV, from its creation to its dissolution (1978-1985). Studies in particular on documentary cinema, on Hitchcock, Eisenstein, Bergman, Tarkovski, and on the films “Apocalypse Now”, “Bread and Chocolate”, “The Man of Marble”, “Of the life of the puppets” …
BOOKS
Releases in 2011 at Editions ATLANTIS :
• Algeria, Unspoken Stories / Scenario, Reactions, Polemics, Documents…
• Grandfather killed two “settlers” / May 8, 1945 in Algeria (insurrection and repression)
Scenario, Polemics, Documents and video of a movie model with one hour of rushes. The project to make a film of 52 ‘supported by the french producer Daniel Leconte is rejected by Arte, shocked by the images where the Algerian octogenarian protagonists tell how on May 9 1945 in the night, they murdered the Europeans of their village…
Official Algerian history, but also French, wants to retain only the second moment: that of the repression of the French army, after Algerian insurrection, also evoked by these protagonists …
Release to Editions COLIN (France), two books on the Arabo-Muslim World, in 2012 and 2013:
• The Democratic Revolution in the Arab World: Ah! if it was true…
On the basis of his Algerian experience, the author who wrote in 2011 even before the elections in Tunisia and Egypt, explains why it will take a long time, probably several centuries, for public opinion to become “democratic” and why the Arab Spring will quickly become a winter …
• The Arab world facing its demons: Nationalism, Islam, Jews…
Based on his Algerian experience, the author points out the three unanimism’ founding factors in the Arab-Muslim world that prevent the advent of democratic thought.
As the result, even the most daring intellectuals who come to break away from the nationalist ideology, and to have a critical relationship to Islam, feel obliged to avoid excommunication and death, ” compensate ‘ against the Jews, especially Israe
- “Algiers – Jerusalem”
How the author lived with his “Jewish question” from his origins to today … Will release in 2019, in France,