Casablanca has always had a singular history with the camera, and the Immeuble Assayag is one of its most photogenic witnesses. Raised in 1930 at 1418 boulevard Hassan Seghir, the ensemble designed by Marius Boyer lifts its three Art Deco towers into the sky above the city — an unmistakable silhouette, one that seems to be waiting only for a camera operator to reveal all its character.
A setting that calls out to the camera
What the eye of cinema is looking for, the building offers naturally. The great verrières (the tall glazed screens) that light the stairwells cast a light that changes as the hours pass — the raw material of every image. The staircases unwind their Art Deco curves like camera movements already written; the façades compose lines of a graphic sharpness; and the terraces, finally, open onto the city panoramas worth any wide shot. Here, every perspective is a potential frame.
A living place rather than a monument frozen in time, the Assayag regularly hosts exhibitions, events and film shoots: the life of the building goes on being written in pictures too.
Marius Boyer and the seventh art
The dialogue between the building and the cinema owes nothing to chance. Its architect, Marius Boyer, also designed the Le Vox cinema, the first cinema in Africa. From the darkened auditoriums of the Vox to the light-filled glazed screens of the Assayag, one and the same sensibility runs through: that of a builder for whom architecture is first of all an experience of looking, an art of staging space. That the building should today attract film crews is almost self-evident.
Filming at the Immeuble Assayag
The building remains a lived-in private residence: film shoots and photography are arranged there with respect for its residents, as part of projects prepared in advance. Production companies, location scouts and photographers wishing to work within its walls are invited to put their project forward through the contact form.
For an initial scout from a distance, the gallery brings together a selection of photographs of the building — enough to begin imagining its next shot.