Benthala, The Places of a Massacre, 2002
“On the night of September 22-23, 1997, during a night of horror, more than 400 people were massacred in Bentalha. During my stays in Algeria following this massacre, I often thought of visiting these places. But this did not happen, for lack of courage or fear of not knowing what to do there.
It was on a rainy day in April 2002 that my friend d. took me to Bentalha. The sky was grey and threatening. I was nervous. Suddenly I saw the sign “Bentalha”. I take out my camera and take some pictures through the windshield. We are driving through the neighborhood where the massacre happened. Time seems to be suspended and the people seem to be frozen.
- offers me to go to one of those houses where they massacred people. We stop in front of a large building under construction. They don’t even seem to notice us: that woman sitting outside, that little girl playing behind that door, or those two men sleeping on the floor.
- leads me into the courtyard where they have slaughtered nine people… suddenly a young boy comes to pick us up: “you have to leave, the police are coming.” On our way back to Algiers, I realized that we had only stayed about twenty minutes and that I had made about fifteen pictures, without even framing or thinking. Back in France, for a long time, I wondered whether this feeling of having been “in the heart of darkness” was the fruit of my imagination or not. And it was much later, while developing this Bentalha film, that I saw that the things I had felt did exist. The fourteen images presented here tell of this experience. »
Bruno Boudjelal
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