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Nourredine Saadi
Biography
The academic and writer Nourredine Saadi (Nono pour les amis) died on December 14, 2017 in Paris, at the age of 73, from cancer. He was buried on December 18 in the Thiais cemetery, in the Paris region. This is a great loss for the Algerian cultural scene. Boulevard de l'abîme, his latest novel, was published in September by Barzakh.
Born in 1944 in Constantine, Nourredine Rabah Saadi continued his studies in Algiers where he was a professor of law at the university until 1994. Leaving Algeria on that date, he taught public law at the University of 'Artois before retiring in 2014.
Nourredine Saadi has published novels, Dieu-le-fit, La Maison de Lumière and La Nuit des Origins, as well as a collection of short stories, Il n’y a pas d’os dans la langue. He has also dedicated two works to the visual artists Rachid Koraïchi and Denis Martinez, and a third to the singer Houria Aïchi. He finally co-signed Matoub Lounès, my brother, in collaboration with Malika Matoub.
An attentive chronicler of Algerian society and an informed observer of cultural life, he is finally the author of numerous texts and articles.
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Rachid Boudjedra
Biography
Rachid Boudjedra (Arabic: رشيد بوجدرة) (b. 5 September 1941 in Aïn Beïda, Algeria) is an Algerian poet, novelist, playwright and critic. Boudjedra wrote in French from 1965 to 1981, at which point he switched to writing in Arabic, often translating his own works back and forth between the two languages. Boudjedra returned to writing in French in 1992 and has continued to write in that language ever since. Educated in Constantine and in Tunis (at the Collège Sadiki), Boudjedra later fought for the FLN during the Algerian War of Independence. He received his degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne, where he wrote a thesis on Céline. Upon receiving his degree, he returned to Algeria to teach, but was sentenced to two years in prison for his criticisms of the government and was exiled to Blida. He lived in France from 1969 till 1972, and then in Rabat, Morocco until 1975.
Boudjedra's fiction is written in a difficult, complex style, reminiscent of William Faulkner or Gabriel García Márquez in its intricacy. La Répudiation (1969, "The Repudiation") brought him sudden attention, both for the strength with which he challenged traditional Muslim culture in Algeria and for the strong reaction against him. Because a fatwa was issued which called for his death, he felt he had to live outside of Algeria. He has routinely been called the greatest living North African writer.
Boudjedra was awarded the Prix du roman arabe in 2010 for Les Figuiers de Barbarie.
André Naffis-Sahely has translated two of his novels into English: Les Figuiers de Barbarie as The Barbary Figs (Haus, 2012) and Les Funérailles as The Funerals (Haus, 2015).
Rachid Boudjedra has also been involved in writing a number of films. Chronique des années de braise (Chronicle of the Years of Fire), (dir. by Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina) which, in 1975 won the Palme d'or at the Cannes Festival.
Source: Article "Rachid Boudjedra" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Forrest Halsey
Biography
William Forrest Halsey (November 9, 1877 – September 30, 1949) was an American writer and screenwriter.
Halsey's novels included Fate and the Butterfly (1909), The Bawlerout (1912), and The Shadow on the Hearth (1914). From 1907 to 1918, he published more than one hundred short stories in popular magazines including Young's Magazine, The Argosy, The Cavalier, and Munsey's Magazine. As a screenwriter, he wrote for more than 60 films between 1913 and 1942. He was born in Roseville, Newark, New Jersey, and died in Los Angeles County, California. (Wikipedia)
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Malek Alloula
Biography
Malek Alloula (مالك علولة), born November 13, 1937 in Oran and died February 17, 2015 in Berlin, is a Franco-Algerian writer in French who pursued editorial activities in Paris from 1967.
In December 1953, Father Alloula, auxiliary mounted gendarme, retired after 27 years of service. He leaves the village of Oranie where he spent 11 years of his last assignment and takes his family to Oran. The Alloula family settled in the large western city in July 1954 in a two-room apartment. The father's retirement pension was not enough, he needed a job to supplement the family's income. The father ends up finding “something”. He had, in fact, rented a shop on a popular street in the city to set up a public writer's office. In the 1955-56 school year, young Malek began his final year of philosophy in a high school in Oran. But in May 1956, he responded to Ugema's call for a strike.
He is expelled from high school. Malek Alloula begins to help his father. The latter acquires an aura of seriousness and efficiency reinforced by the acquisition of a typewriter. Little by little, young Malek, learning from his father, himself becomes the titular public writer of sorts. The father leaves the shop to his son. Rodé has the “poetic art” of minutes, the father imposes on his son “the tyranny of the spare and expeditious style”.
“The short, three-headed sentences (subject, verb, complement) were intended to articulate a thought geared towards obtaining a criminal record or a marriage certificate, in short, any official document bearing some seal and initials.”
Malek Alloula will study modern literature at the Faculty of Algiers, then at the Sorbonne in Paris where he did his thesis on Denis Diderot and the 18th century. He lived and worked in Paris where he settled permanently in 1967. He is the author of several collections of poetry. “He is a discreet and essential figure in Algerian literature,” we can read on the page dedicated to the poet, on the website of his Algerian publisher Barzakh, who has republished the entire work of this Oranese poet.
Alloula's poetry, published in Paris and the Maghreb, is characterized by elegant writing, rich in metaphors and symbols. These have as themes the city, nature, women of which he will be a deconstructor of the mental universe of colonial exoticism as shown by his work on colonial photos of Algerian women.
Writer, literary critic, poet, Malek Alloula chairs the association which helps to publicize the work of his brother assassinated in 1994, the playwright Abdelkader Alloula. He married the woman of letters Assia Djebar in 1980, then from 1999 until his death, he lived with the Belgian designer Véronique Lejeune. Among his books, we will cite "Cities" (poems, 1069), "Cities and other places" (poems, 1979), "The Colonial Harem, images of a sub-eroticism" (illustrated essay by photographs, 2001), "Dreamers/Sepultures followed by L'Exercice des sens" (poems, 1982), "Measures du vent" (poems, 1984), "Les Festins de l'exil" (essay , 2003) and "Access to the body" (poems, 2003).
Malek Alloula died on February 17, 2015 in Berlin where he was the host of the DAAD (Berliner-Kuenstlerprogramm.de).
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Jack Kemp
Biography
Jack French Kemp (July 13, 1935 – May 2, 2009) was an American politician, professional football player, and U.S. Army veteran who served as the ninth U.S. secretary of housing and urban development in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. A member of the Republican Party from New York, he previously served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971 to 1989. He was the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in the 1996 election, as the running mate of Bob Dole; they lost to incumbent president Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. Kemp had previously contended for the presidential nomination in the 1988 Republican primaries.
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Rabah Belamri
Biography
Rabah Belamri, born October 11, 1946 in Bougaa, in the Sétif region, in Algeria, and died September 28, 1995 in Nanterre, is an Algerian writer.
Rabah Belamri lost his sight in 1962 (the year of Algeria's independence). After studying at the Sétif high school, at the School for Blind Youth in El Biar (Algiers), at the Bouzareah Teachers' College and at the University of Algiers, he arrived in Paris in 1972 where he defended a doctorate on the work of Louis Bertrand, Mirror of Colonial Ideology which was published by the Office of University Publications (OPU) in 1980. He acquired French nationality.
He is the author of several collections of poems, stories and novels inspired by his Algerian childhood. “Present in my novels, the themes of childhood are at the center of The Sun Under the Sieve and Memory in an Archipelago. These two stories, set in the world of childhood, present themselves both as an exploration of the foundations of my being and as an archeology of collective memory. » In his works, Belamri places his characters in places from his childhood in an Algeria at war and post-independence, and makes them speak in dialect Arabic by drawing their expressions from the local land. Thus in “Women Without Face”, he describes the euphoria of the time: “The volleys of rifles, the crazy horns, the vibrations of drums… a rumor of ululations or patriotic songs broadcast over loudspeakers. » A distinguished storyteller, he borrowed from Algerian popular culture “symbols, metaphors, turns of phrase, rhythms of language, modes of narration”. But more than a storyteller, Belamri was naturally interested in Algerian problems; thus, regarding the condition of women, for him: “Our society will be condemned to error and powerlessness as long as women are not taken into account”, because they are “a symbol of freedom and life”. He says no to “ideologies of regression.” »
As for the place of Algerian writers of French writing in the national culture: “It has been more than forty years since French-language Algerian literature acquired legitimacy in Algeria and outside Algeria. Imposed by history, it is, whether we like it or not, a national reality. Wanting to expel from our literary memory Amrouche or Sénac, Kateb or Mammeri: a behavior of self-harm. The anathema cast on this part of our culture is frankly scandalous. It constitutes an attack on freedom of expression and creation. » His relationship with the French language which “is not opposed to the language of the mother, but maintains a relationship of creative exchange with it”.
Touched by the work of Jean Sénac to whom he devoted an essay and whom he considered as a guide. For Rabah Belamri, tireless questioner of the world, poetry is undoubtedly only a means which participates, with others, in a quest for clarity and fullness. A need for light like water long refused but also a denunciation of everything that burdens daily life and hope: the alienated or bargained-for woman, the sequestered happiness.
He died on September 28 in 1995 in Paris following a surgical procedure, leaving his work unfinished.
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Jean Sénac
Biography
Jean Sénac (جان سيناك), born in Béni-Saf in Algeria, on November 29, 1926 and assassinated in Algiers on August 30, 1973 (without the case being clarified), is an Algerian Christian, socialist and libertarian poet. In 1955 he joined the cause of Algerian independence.
Originally from Catalonia, his maternal grandfather, Juan Comma, came to Algeria to work in the Béni-Saf iron mine. Jean Sénac, who did not know his father, perhaps a gypsy, bore the name of his mother, Jeanne Comma (1887-1965), until the age of five and his recognition by Edmond Sénac. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Saint-Eugène, a working-class district of Oran. Demobilized in March 1946, Jean Sénac found work as a secretary in a business house in Belcourt, staying with cousins in Bab El Oued. In June 1946 he founded the Lélian artistic and literary circle of which he was president. The same year he met Emmanuel Roblès, the sculptor André Greck, the architect and painter Jean de Maisonseul, and in 1947 Sauveur Galliéro, Louis Nallard, Maria Manton, Louis Bénisti on whom he published articles in “ Republican Oran”. In October 1952, he resumed his activity as a radio broadcaster. Bringing together in its editorial committee Mohammed Dib, Sauveur Galliéro, Jean de Maisonseul, Mouloud Mammeri, Albert Memmi and Louis Nallard. In the midst of the Arabization of the country, culture and language, the manifesto of Sénac (to whom Algerian literature in French writing is largely indebted for a work of updating and theorization, which did not exist ) appears as a final provocation for which its author will pay dearly: little by little, almost all doors close, not those of people, but of state organizations without which nothing is possible in a country living under the sign of statism. This manifesto calls for a Mediterranean, united, socialist, egalitarian, Arab, Berber and pied-noir Algeria, with Arabic, Berber and French scripts. Kateb Yacine then said nothing else (in Les Lettres françaises, 1963): “There is no Berber Algeria, there is no Arab Algeria, there is no French Algeria : there is an Algeria. It is a very rich nation to the extent that it is multinational.”
“Algerian poet of French writing”, as he defined himself, died murdered in his cellar-lookout in Algiers, on the night of August 29 to 30, 1973. Jean Sénac was the first martyr in a horrible list . The French did not forgive him for having been a member of the F.L.N. during the War of Independence; and the Algerian government had difficulty supporting its very critical positions with regard to the bureaucratic system in place. Jean Sénac was a completely undesirable man. His audience with young people, his life, his homosexuality, his freedom of speech in political or cultural matters, the repercussions abroad of his judgments on Algeria, made him an embarrassing character for many people. There are therefore many people who could benefit from crime. Jean Sénac felt this death lurking: Why follow this trail – everything is concluded in advance – when you wash my face – the sun will no longer be there.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Kosa Bokšan
Biography
Kosara Bokšan was born in Berlin in 1925.
Three years later, the family moved to Belgrade. She took art classes at Mladen Josić's school at the Kolarac People's University, then in Zora Petrović's studio in 1944. She entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1945, in Ivan Tabaković's class. She was a member of the Zadar group (1947) consisting of seven students from the Academy of Fine Arts, including her future husband, Petar Omčikus. With Omčikus, she went to Rijeka where she lived and painted between 1948 and 1951. She had her first solo exhibition at the ULUS gallery in Belgrade in 1952.
She was a member of the artist group Jedanaestorica (Eleven Artists). In 1952, she moved to Paris with Petar Omčikus and the same year participated in the exhibition of Yugoslav women artists at the Salon of Women Painters and Sculptors in London. She has presented personal exhibitions in Lille, Paris, Strasbourg, Rome, Belgrade, Zagreb, Novi Sad, etc. During her artistic career, she participated in many important group exhibitions and art events such as the Salon d'Octobre in Belgrade, the Salon de Mai (Salon de Mai) and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris.
In the 1960s, in Vela Luka, on the island of Korčula in Croatia, Kosa Bokšan and Petar Omčikus built a house with a studio. Thanks to their commitment, three international meetings of artists took place between 1968 and 1972. Kosara Bokšan's two most important retrospective exhibitions were organized at the Gallery of Visual Arts – Rajko Mamuzić Endowment Collection in Novi Sad in 1990 and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade in 2001.
She died in 2009.
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Sydney Sweeney
Biography
Sydney Bernice Sweeney (born September 12, 1997) is an American actress. She gained early recognition for her roles in Everything Sucks!, The Handmaid's Tale and Sharp Objects in 2018. She received wider acclaim for her performances in the drama series Euphoria (2019–present) and the first season of the anthology series The White Lotus (2021), both of which earned her nominations for Primetime Emmy Awards.
In film, Sweeney garnered critical acclaim for her performances in the drama film Reality (2023) and for her portrayal of professional boxer Christy Martin in the biopic Christy (2025), and has also appeared in the box office hits Anyone but You (2023) and The Housemaid (2025). Her other film credits include Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Madame Web (2024), and Immaculate (2024).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sydney Sweeney, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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