In 1908-1909 Albert Samama Chikli sold his negatives mostly if not exclusively to the short-lived Le Lion company. Shot in 1910 and released in January 1911, Industrie agricole arabe was possibly the first negative he sold to Gaumont, marking the beginning of a long collaboration. Hidden in a longer compilation edited in the 1920s by Gaumont for educational purposes, negative material of the film has recently been rediscovered and identified with the help of frame enlargements and contact prints of film frames in the Albert Samama Chikli Archives. La Figue de Barbarie, the opening part of the four parts of Industrie agricole arabe, is a perfect example of Samama’s filmmaking: informal, lively, direct, human and devoid of orientalism or pictorialism.

Mariann Lewinsky