Mohammed Soudani
Filmmaker.
Mohammed Soudani was born in El-Assam, Algeria. After graduating from IDHEC, he worked as a cameraman for Algerian Radio Television from 1970 to 1971. He moved to Switzerland in 1972, where he worked as a cameraman at Polivideo SA in Locarno. After training in the USA in 1987, he began directing. He shot numerous television programmes, as well as operas from the Arena in Verona and various musical programmes. For the cinema, he was responsible for the camerawork on various awarded films, amongst others, Antigone, Le trésor dans la cheminée, or Au nom du Christ by Roger Gnoan M'Bala. He also did camera work on many publicity films and African documentaries. As a director, besides the conception of advertising spots, video clips and credit sequences for Ivory Coast Television, he has directed various news reports for Italian Swiss Television. Among his documentaries are three 16mm short subjects, Nawa, l'homme et l'eau (1989), Yiribakro (1991) and Abidjan, ville de contraste (1991), and two full-length documentaries: Hommages (1992), devoted to the construction of the Yamoussoukro basilica in the Ivory Coast, and Murales (1992). The latter, linked to the 700th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America, portrays four American mural painters whose work deals with the consequences of colonisation. Filmed in Senegal and Italy, Waalo Fendo (Where the Earth Freezes) in his first feature length fiction. His newest work is the feature film "ROULETTE" (2008).