Boudjemaâ Karèche, Algiers, film critic and former director of Cinémathèque algerienne

Law graduate Boudjemaâ Karèche started working as a programmer at Cinémathèque Algerienne in
1971. He later served as its director for thirty-four years, from 1978 until 2003. He transformed the
cinematheque into a reference point not only for Algerian directors, producers and journalists –
whom it also supported in every way possible – but also for Arab cinema, African cinema and,
more generally, independent cinema, which was searching for new languages with which to recount
the changes taking place in societies across the world.

Cinémathèque Algerienne became a meeting point for an Algerian civil society that was
experiencing the development of the feminist movement and grew around the programming curated
by Boudjemaâ. The late 1980s in particular constituted a golden age for the cinematheque and every
screening, every meeting was attended by a large animated public that participated in impassioned
debates on cinema and civil values.

Karèche’s prestige turned the cinematheque into the leading authority for cinema in his country and
a space that was known and appreciated in the world of international cinema. Even after the
outbreak of civil war in the 1990s, Cinémathèque Algerienne never once interrupted its activity,
becoming a place of cultural resistance in a society that experienced a long period of uncertainty,
desperation and disintegration.

What remain are the hundreds of meetings organised by Karèche, his programming packed with
culture and creativity, his ability to create an authoritative cultural institute in his homeland which
was recognised the world over, alongside his passion for cinema which he shared with a wide
audience and the merit of having transformed, for a significant period of time, his cinematheque
into an institution that lived and grew together with large community of cinema lovers and
enthusiasts.

For all of these reasons, it is our great pleasure to present the VITTORIO BOARINI AWARD 2025,
created in 2022 in memory of the founder of Il Cineteca di Bologna and awarded every year during
Il Cinema Ritrovato to international figures who have distinguished themselves in the preservation
and promotion of cinema heritage, to Boudjemaâ Karèche.