Catherine Belkhodja

Catherine Belkhodja (born 15 April 1955) is a French artist, actress and film director.

On 15 April 1955, Belkhodja was born in Paris, France, to an Algerian father and a French mother.

She lived and studied in Algiers where she wrote her first short stories.

She went on studying theatre, music and fine arts, took her first steps in the cinema and left for Paris to read architecture, philosophy, town planning and ethnology of the Maghreb.

She graduated in philosophy and began earning her living as a teacher, then reading architecture, specialising in bioclimatics and working in the town planning department of the Paris Prefecture.

She later took aesthetics with Olivier Revault d'Allones at the Sorbonne University, prior to leaving for Belgium to further her studies in solar architecture, then for Egypt to work with Hassan Fathy on earth architecture.

Belkhodja's activities range from the cinema and television to conceptual art, as well as journalism, philosophy and writing.

On her return to Paris from Egypt, she enrolled at the Paris Academy of Dramatic Art and took her first steps in the cinema under Claire Devers in "Noir et Blanc" (Black and White), Guy Gilles in "Nuit docile" (Docile night), Jean-Pierre Limosin in "L'autre nuit" (The other night) and Benoît Peeters in "Le compte-rendu" (The Report).

She was the central character in Chris Marker's Silent Movie and documentary Level Five.

Belkhodja has collaborated on a number of television programmes, such as Moi-je, Sexy folies, Mosaïque, Envoyé spécial, Des racines et des ailes, Faut pas rêver, Océaniques.

While working on a television programme, she was noticed by Philippe Alfonsi, who asked her to present a new magazine he was setting up with Maurice Dugowson and invited her to help in its conception.

Thus, came to life Taxi, a talk show in which Belkhodja and her guests would sit in a Cadillac driven by night around Paris.

The programme was awarded a Sept d'or by the French television profession.

Following the success of this programme, Chris Marker gave her the role of a journalist in Level Five (1997).

She then left for Algeria to make her first documentary "Reflet perdu du miroir", the story of twin sisters who meet after a long separation.

Belkhodja published her first newspaper articles in Le Sauvage and Sans frontières and wrote her first script on her return from Egypt.

She has worked as a reporter for the Gamma Agency, has also collaborated with such magazines as L'autre journal and La légende du siècle, has founded a new magazine specialising in Asian issues and collaborated with gastronomy, tourism and travel magazines.

She has refocused her activities on writing and regularly publishes her texts in literary reviews such as Alter texto, Hakaî, Poète, Carquois, les Cahiers de Poésie and Gong.

Belkhodja founded Karedas, a company dedicated to film production and publishing, and launched a kaiseki collection dedicated to haiku.

To inaugurate this collection, she called on Yves Brillon, a Canadian haiku poet who won two awards in the 2005 and 2006 haiku competitions organised by Karedas and the Japanese Cultural Centre in Paris.

Belkhodja is currently running a haiku writing workshop on the Psychologies magazine website, in which she has presented keys to haiku writing.

This yearly competition set up in 2005 rewards the best haiku writers from ten countries.