Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave, New York
Thursday, February 22
7:30 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, 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 Allouache
The Man Who Watched Windows
1982, 85 min, 16mm
In 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 post-post-independence 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).

$12 General Admission / $9 Seniors and Students Tickets available at the box office or at the Anthology Film Archives website