For more than half of his long life, writer and composer Paul Bowles lived in Morocco. His five decades in Tangier left a mutual impression, both on him and the city with which he became permanently associated. Yes, his persona, work, and biography are consistently viewed through an academic, Western-centric lens. Through this lens, Moroccan persons are regularly reduced to exoticized extras. Therefore, Karim Debbagh‘s talking-heads documentary on the New York-born artist is groundbreaking, first and foremost, as it looks at Bowles’ life from a Moroccan and mostly working-class perspective. Giving new life to footage he shot 25 years ago, the Moroccan director, who knew Bowles himself, returns to Tangier to unearth the traces of the famous US writer.
To do so, he meets the people who engaged with Bowles, some of them on a daily basis. Among them are the writer Mohamed Choukri, artist and painter Mohamed Mrabet, who was also affiliated with William Burroughs, Temsamani, who was Bowles’ driver for 30 years, and ultimately Boulaich, another chauffeur who drove Bowles during his final decade in the 90s. Their stories are a motley mix of wistful memories, humorous anecdotes, contemplations, and gossip, cast in a soft light of nostalgia for what appears to be the good old days. Paradoxically, the most interesting aspect of this rediscovery and reclamation of a person and their influence on a place and an era is not Bowles himself but the social and political climate in Tangier at the time.
Link: https://cineccentric.com/2025/12/14/five-eyes-documentary-%E2%98%85%E2%98%85/