Tarak Ben Ammar and Tunisia, an affair of the heart
He brings the North to the South

"JACK OF ALL TRADE"

"I started with my own car, as driver, assistant, representative, jack of all trades. I then approached film-making from all professions: set assistant, accountant... I didn’t know anything about cameras or business. But I was a talented organizer, the link between the authorities, the hotel owners and the technicians..."

"From one film to another film, from recommendation to recommendation, people started to talk about me. It was obvious that my family link to the President of the Republic was a guarantee for them, and I took advantage of this, even if there was no substance to it. After the Yom Kippur war, westerners needed to be reassured, to have a guarantee of safety. The essential component of my success was human talent: I had to inspire confidence, show the energy that I was able to deploy, and that I be surrounded by devoted and capable young people."

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A VERITABLE NATIONAL FILM INDUSTRY

In 1974, Tarak Ben Ammar created Carthago Films, a company with a registered capital of FRF 300,000, thanks to the salaries earned working on Italian films (Rossellini’s The Messiah...). "Ben Ammar, didn’t sound good. Carthage, Carthago, was much more chic."

But how to finance a film without money? The next year, for his first production, Les Magiciens by Claude Chabrol, Tarak Ben Ammar admits that he spent more time looking for the FRF 5 million needed than on the film’s content. In the end, it was a total flop. But he didn’t let this get him down and continued his activities, between logistics for foreign productions and executive production. It is the grand epoch of the American "invasion" of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, for Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Tarak Ben Ammar always had the same goal in mind: develop a veritable industry of the seventh art in his country. He imposes the participation and training of local trainees and technicians on the shoots. He also built immense studios in Monastir and El Kantaoui... All of these activities generated one million work days, 25,000 jobs over thirty years, € 250 million in foreign currency. Tarak Ben Ammar had managed to move the North to the South.

STAR WARS: A MYTH IN THE WAITING

Tarak Ben Ammar met George Lucas through the intermediate of a decorator. The film-maker is looking for lunar landscapes. In 1976, part of the five months of shooting of the first Star Wars episode took place in the village of Tataouine, in the Great Tunisian South. The village even inspired the director to name the planet Tatooine. Indeed, the area is used again by George Lucas three years later, producer this time for the Raiders of the Lost Ark directed by Steven Spielberg. The following Star Wars films were also filmed partly in Tunisia: believing that Tataouine brought him luck, George Lucas always returns there, even if for just one week!

TAKING TUNISIAN CINEMA OUT OF THE GHETTO

Tarak Ben Ammar does not want to hear anything of a "national film industry created by swathes of subventions and politically smoothed over for the pleasure of the members of Saint-André-des-Arts. The domestic market is inexistent. As far as Egyptian films are concerned, they are amortized locally. In 1985, we had only 65 cinema theaters for the whole of Tunisia." Currently, Tunisia has just 15 film theaters as a result of the spread of bootleg DVDs.

"Up until now, I have invested in my country in a different way. I received a great deal of criticism, and I am still criticized, for not having produced any Tunisian films. In fact, I have brought to Tunisia € 250 million in cash income... I decided to become an ambassador of my country to foreigners. If I had been a young Tunisian producer going to see Gaumont distribution to say: 'I have a very talented young Tunisian director', they would not even have let me go up to the first floor! Over the first ten years of my career, I sought only to create a name, a brand, a label. This also brought me to understand that a film is either universal or it is not."
He then co-produced La Ballade de Mamelouk, Kahla-Hamra, Le Pain nu...

THE EXILE

1985-1987. His aunt was repudiated by her husband the president Bourguiba. In "disgrace", Tarak Ben Ammar found himself in exile in Paris. His film-making activities in Tunisia were suspended, the Monastir and El Kantaoui studios closed, and even pillaged, technicians out of work, certain contracts cancelled... Tarak Ben Ammar pays back his € 38 million of debts thanks to his catalogue of films: "If it wasn’t for the surge of private television stations, which appeared in Europe in the 1980s, I would never have pulled through."