This post is simply to pass on a few links, all relating to Morocco.
The first is to the site for the Maroc Blog Awards. The title is slightly misleading because you don’t just vote on blogs. There is an award for the photo, Facebook group, and Twitterer of the year, among others. Morocco and Moroccans don’t have a huge online presence. It’s a small country. But they took to the internet relatively early in the global scheme of things. I attended a conference about the internet in Morocco in the mid 1990s and it was packed. It is also a pretty well wired country and lots of Moroccans who are active in online media outside of Morocco still prominently identify their online selves as Moroccan, so there is some good stuff for voters to choose from. It will be interesting to see, however, if any of the recently arrested bloggers. The latest was on December 8.
The second is this story from Le Journal Hebdomaire that Abdellatif Laâbi has won the prestigious Goncourt Prize for Poetry in France.  This is an much coveted award and it well deserved.  It wasn’t long ago that the Moroccan press would have barely acknowledge this award because Laâbi was persona non grata in Morocco.  Up until 1972 he was part of an enormously influential and creative group of intellectuals and artists, as is detailed in this article.  But their activities were eventually judged destabilizing.  He was tortured, imprisoned and exiled.  Laâbi is no longer persona non grata in Morocco and his work is no longer banned, but he still resider in France.
The third is an interview with Tarik Mounim published in Le journal hebdomadaire about a campaign called “This is Not the End” by “Save Cinemas in Morocco.” The goal of this organization is just what the name would indicate, to preserve movie theaters, the place where movies were made to be seen.
Many people who take prescription cheap cialis 100mg asthma medications do not produce instant reactions and may take a while to trigger sexual stimulation. Sure there are some legit operations (still illegal I levitra de prescription think) but they are the exception to the rule. Focus on Pleasure rather Than Erection: While making love, cialis side effects focus on pleasing your lady. Digestion problems: Experiencing the constant waves of stress and anxiety are responsible for low interest in lovemaking. buy cheap levitra As a side note, but related, there was another story in the Le journal hebdomaire reporting that the Centre cinématographique marocain has just awarded Nour-Eddine Lakhmari, director of the critically-acclaimed and somewhat controversial film Casanegra, 4.5 million dirham toward the production of his next movie, Zéro.  I’m dying to see both of them.  Moroccan cinema has really been flourishing in recent years.  It is arguably among the most creative and original in the Middle East, though it is silly to make such comparisons.  I just wish it were easier to see in this country.
Quite frankly if Moroccan (or Algerian and Tunisian) cinema is ever to reach the audience it deserves and can have in the US, it will have to come to terms with the fact that cinema and movie theaters in the United States are big business.  There is a huge audience for foreign films, but it is not geographically centered as it in in European cities.  In the US it is scattered at colleges and universities of all sizes as well as cities large and small.  In my heart I side with filmmakers who say that a movie was meant to be experienced on the big screen in a communal experience with the rest of the audience.
But my head says that these filmmakers need to realize that in the United States their films will not make money this way and, more importantly, they will not get seen.  They need to think about alternative channels of distribution.  What is the ideal time for a DVD release in relation to the theatrical release?  Some small studios are going so far as to do them simultaneously.  What about digital distribution?