Sheila Petty explores how cultural heritage is presented in Amazigh films produced within Morocco.

Highlighting the development of Amazigh film and video since the early 1990s, this open access book offers a new understanding of the role of cultural heritage in Moroccan Amazigh cinema. Petty examines the importance of cinema as a medium of transmission of cultural heritage and Amazigh cinema's importance and influence within North African and world cinema contexts. She offers new interpretations of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in this cinema through close readings of key films' narratives, aesthetic properties, and political, historical, and cultural contexts.

Petty analyzes these films' foundations in oral tradition, their borrowing from literature, painting, theater, and performative gestures to create art-action where representation involves both image and action in order to be sovereign. Responding to recent calls to broaden Amazigh cinema scholarship , this book theorizes ways of thinking about time and space that arise from the filmmakers' cultural heritage to determine if it is possible to “Amazighize” cinematic paradigms.

This book will be essential reading for scholars and students in North African cinema and film studies.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-BC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.