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On 17th September 2022 the M’Hamid Oasis Morocco film was selected for screening at the Museu Rainha D. Leonor in Beja, Portugal, as part of the 2022 edition of HERITALES – International Heritage Film Festival. The festival aims to promoting the dissemination of heritage through various media, film being its main focus, and presents anthropological knowledge of different cultures through cinema and documentaries, focusing on the dissemination of material and immaterial heritage, the ways of life customs, education and architectures transmitting the meaning of rites for communities and revealing the elements that make communities sustainable.

Directed by Monika Koeck, the film documents the restoration and documentation work carried out by ArCHIAM and the NGO Terrachidia in 2019, with direct involvement of the local community. The film features Ouled Youssef, a traditional fortified settlement in the Moroccan Sahara, and the Marabout of Sidi Abdellah Khalifa, the burial place of a man respected and cherished by the local community. Here, ArCHIAM and Terrachidia ran an “Earthen Architectural Heritage Workshop” in which international participants were trained in restoration and documentation of traditional earthen architecture, and awareness was raised about the need to safeguard the cultural heritage of oasis environments from the threats of climate change, abandonment and uncontrolled development.