Les Ciseaux

Mounir Fatmi
2003. France, Morocco. vo French. 13’

« A man and a woman make love, they share their pleasure like scissors which cross ». The pair, like a pair of scissors that is sharp, dangerous and sublime. « Les ciseaux » (the scissors) is a video made using images from the Nabil Ayouch's film « Une minute de soleil en moins », censored in Morocco. »

In Les Ciseaux (2003), Mounir Fatmi puts on the censored love scenes in the film Une minute de soleil en moins/A Minute of Sunlight less, directed by Nabil Ayouch that same year. Mounir Fatmi thus in his turn makes a love film, but the love is for imagery. Les Ciseaux presents the entwinements between a man and a woman, and more broadly embraces: 1) between a film undone (Une minute de soleil en moins) and a backup film (Les Ciseaux); 2) between the ideology that censored the scenes (Moroccan fundamentalism) and the discursive layer which helps them to rebound back (the text by Alfred de Musset, a popular symbol of the love discourse, since it is taught to all children in republican schools); 3) between the destroyers and creators of a film. For the concept consists in encompassing factors absent from the arrangement: "It has also become a documentary film but in conjunction with Moroccan fundamentalists and the censors, because it is they who decided on the cuts ".