"FILM HISTORY: Tunisian Film Pioneer Albert Samama Chikly (1872-1933). In 1897 Albert Samama Chikly, a Tunisian Jew, together with a photographer named Soler, organized the first screenings of Lumière films in a Tunis shop. The original twelve minute program of films, bolstered by some magic lantern views, included such familiar titles as 'La Sortie de l'Usines' and 'L'Arrivée d'un Train' (Arrival of the Train). In common with the introduction of film in many non-Western countries, Tunisia was offered its first films from a businessman who also introduced other modern novelties; in Chikly's case, the bicycle, radio and X-rays. Unusually, Chikly was to persevere in his film interests. He was active as an actuality filmmaker in Tunisia and France, filming over Tunis from a balloon in 1908, and filming for the French army at Verdun during the First World War. He also took Auto-chrome color photographs during the war.  He knew the The Lumière Brothers, Abel Gance and Rex Ingram, who wanted his actress daughter Haydée Chikly to work in Hollywood. Chikly made the first Tunisian fiction film, a short entitled ""Zohra"" made in 1922, and then the first Tunisian feature film, ""Ain el-Ghezal"" ou la fille de Carthage (The Girl from Carthage), in 1924, a remarkable achievement when African film-making in general was almost non-existent. Both films starred his daughter, who continued acting in Tunisian films into the 1990s.  His tombstone bears the epitaph: ""Tireless in curiosity, reckless in courage, audacious in enterprise, obstinate amidst trials, resigned to misfortune, he leaves his friends.""http://www.victorian-cinema.net/samama"
{"Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image ExifOffset": "46", "EXIF Tag 0xA96E": "[]", "EXIF Tag 0x4E71": "[]", "EXIF JPEGProc": "", "EXIF Tag 0x0010": "", "EXIF CellWidth": "[]"}