Le Park (The Park)

In Randa Maroufi’s film Le Park, a long tracking shot guides the viewer through an overgrown theme park in Casablanca, where they encounter a range of different young people in a series of highly fluid scenes. The youths are shown in everyday situations, but also embroiled in violent disputes. The film thematizes the violence between young people and their presence on different social media platforms. In a series of long shots in which the youths appear to be frozen to the spot, we see them coming at each other armed with dangerous weapons.

The film begins with a shot of a palm lined street, accompanied by the ambient sounds of the street and a radio broadcast about the supposedly criminal activities of young people on social networks. Subsequently, we hear a series of radio reports, as well as the voices of various young people who talk about wanting to be 'real', and discuss the right way of staging photos.

The camerawork and the recorded conversations give the viewer the feeling that they will soon be confronted with an horrific violent event, an event which never actually occurs. Violence and brutality are hinted at, but remain hidden beneath the surface of the work. The images of the abandoned park, with its rusted and weathered equipment becomes a symbol for a broken youth, for whom the staging and actual carrying out of violence have become a way of venting their frustration. (Josephine Halbach)

* We can only show an excerpt of this work in the online archive. For the complete version, please contact the artist and Le Fresnoy.