Anthology Film Archives32 2nd Ave, New YorkThursday, February 22, 20247 pm

Join us Thursday for the fifth installment of our ongoing film series at Anthology Film Archives, where we will be screening The Man Who Watched Windows (1982), a rarely seen early work from Algerian director Merzak Allouache. A singular and underappreciated film filled with creeping tracking shots and semiotic commentary, The Man Who Watched Windows is a tightly-calibrated portrait of a man who does not wish to understand the changing world around him.

Merzak AllouacheThe Man Who Watched Windows1982, 85 min, 16mmIn Arabic with projected English subtitles.Merzak Allouache’s third film, The Man Who Watched Windows is the story of Rachid, an austere bureaucrat who has just been transferred without warning from the National Archives to the cinema library. The constant motion of 1980s Algerian society displeases him, as does cinema; worse yet, books on cinema – the very idea of which disturbs him. Having dedicated his life to the state, Rachid is so agitated by his transfer that he is driven to paranoia and, ultimately, an act of violence. Print courtesy the CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée).