| Selma Baccar | |
| Birth Date: | December 15, 1945 |
| Birth Place: | Tunis |
| Occupation: | filmmaker, producer and politician. |
| Notable Works: | Fatma 75 (1976), El niño de la luna (1989), Khochkhach (2006) and El Jaida (2017). |
Selma Baccar or Salma Baccar (born December 15, 1945) is a Tunisian filmmaker, producer and politician. She is considered the first woman to make a featured length film in Tunis.[1] [2] Baccar is known for creating manifestos through her films, centered around women's rights in Tunisia.
Selma Baccar was born on December 15, 1945, in Tunis. Her family moved to Hammam-Lif when she was seven year old.[1] Baccar was raised as a Muslim by her parents and has done the pilgrimage to Mecca with her family twice; however, Baccar identifies as agnostic. She began to study psychology in 1966 to 1968 in Lausanne, Switzerland. She relocated after 2 years to study film in Paris at Institut Français de Cinéma.[3] She then became a member of the Tunisian Federation of Amateur Filmmakers (Fédération Tunisienne des Cinéastes Amateurs, FTCA), where she worked as an assistant director for a Tunisian television series.
At the age of 21, Baccar began to create short films in 1966, along with other women at the Hammam-Lif amateur film club. Her films revolve around women's issues and rights in Tunisia. Her first short film, made in 1966, was a black and white film called L'Eveil, that tackled women's liberation in Tunisia. L'Eveil later received accolades. Baccar directed her first full-length feature film in 1975 titled Fatma 75, viewed as a "pioneer film" in Tunisia.[4] This was the first full-length feature film directed by a woman and characterised as "a feminist essay film about women's roles in Tunisia."[5] The film uses a didactic style film that addresses feminism in Tunisia and was banned for several years, due to censorship issues in multiple scenes, by the Tunisian Ministry of information, and could not be viewed in commercial movie theatres.
Her second full length film, Habiba M’sika (1994), was a biopic of a famous Tunisian singer and dancer, Marguerite Habiba Msika. Flowers of Oblivion told the story of Zakia, an opium addict in a psychiatric hospital in Vichy-ruled Tunisia in the 1940s. The director owns her own production company under Intermedia Productions alongside other notable female directors, to make films and commercials. Baccar also has produced a number of short films.[6]
Baccar's activism for Tunisian women's rights led her to an active political career and she became a member of the Al Massar political party. In October 2011, Baccar was elected a member to the Constituent Assembly[7] In 2014, she was promoted from vice-president to president of the parliamentary group of Democrats in Tunisia, "the first and only woman to chair a parliamentary bloc."[8]