• Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger: Chouf Ouchouf

    Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger, Chouf Ouchouf | Photo: Mario Del Curto / Strates

    Sideshow has watched the full-length DVD of Chouf Ouchouf and can report that it's a strange, beguiling, extraordinary work – an evocation of the narrow alleys and dangerous secrets of the Medina, the old quarter of the city of Tangiers, its vibrant life and great crowds. The vernacular language of the Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger, a family of Morrocan acrobats, is shaded and deepened by the direction of Belgian artists Zimmerman and de Perrot – and between their two aesthetics they seem to catch both the literal reality of the city and an abstracted sense of its hidden life: in other words, the day and the night. It's a little like a Paul Auster novel; odd, but urgent. Do not fail to see it.