The Red Tent, one of thirty film and TV productions made in Morocco in 2014

Mission Impossible 5, A Hologram for the King and Queen of the Desert with Nicole Kidman as British explorer and diplomat Gertrude Bell, along with 30 other foreign films and TV productions sailed to Morocco in 2014, investing an estimated $120 million in production locally, a 420% jump from 2013.

The next big shoot set to take place in Morocco is Spectre, Sam Mendes’ new James Bond movie, starring Daniel Craig and Mark Strong, which is taking four months just to prepare for the 10-day shoot in June.

VARIETY tells the full story.

Spending the night under desert stars is something we should all experience at least once, but if you only have a few days to spend in Marrakech, you can still watch the glittering firmament at the Cultural Center of Atlas Golf Marrakech.

The top floor of the centre is the observatory, with a painted ceiling of the solar system and two telescopes, including a 600 mm diameter, the largest in the country. It also has a great café, an aquarium and a museum of fossils and minerals from Morocco, some of them dating back tens of millions of years.

The Cultural Centre is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 7pm, and you can pre-book for observation evening for 100 to 150 dirham.

Atlas Golf Marrakech, Route d’Amizmiz BP 2064 Marrakech 40000, Tél.+212 (0)5 24 37 66 66, www.atlasgolfmarrakech.com

The Marrakech Biennale began ten years ago as a festival to build bridges between the cultures through the arts, and brings together artists from around the world to create work that respondsto the magical environment of Marrakech. Arts enthusiasts organize stimulating conferences, interactive events and world-class exhibitions, and this year, the Biennale’s fifth edition, is no exception.

Exhibitions feature heavily during the Biennale, and the Marrakech Museum is hosting an exhibition from Shanghai’s Museum of the Himalayas, while Dar Sherifa has a collection of black and white photos on display, under the title of Il était une fois Marrakech (Marrakech as it was). But if you want to know about the customs and traditions of Morocco, The Museum of the Art of Living in the Medina, is open all year round.

One of the big draws to the cultural life of Marrakech is the amount of live music and performance currently on offer, (although this tends to be an ever-changing programme of delights), from the dinner show ‘Super Star’ with Moroccan music phenomenon Ayman Zbib at the Restaurant Mandaloun, to the club bands Rock Is Not Dead and Yallah, playing at L’Epicurien and Le Zinc respectively. (There’s even an English quiz night at Café du Livre, although I suspect this isn’t part of the official Biennale!) The Ecole Superieure des Arts Visuels hosts a programme of opera over the next couple of months, with such favourites as Mozart’s Cossi Fan Tutte and La Boheme by Puccini

The Biennale takes place until 31^st March (www.marrakechbiennale.org), but to keep up-to-date with the everything that is going on in and around Marrakech, Made in Marrakech (www.madein-marrakech.com) is the site to watch.

It doesn’t take the first-time visitor to Marrakech long to realise just how beautiful the countryside around the city is. In fact, it usually comes as quite a surprise. As well as enjoying Moroccan gastronomy, one of the favourite pastimes is to take a cooking course using local produce. Now you can combine the beauty of the country with learning about Moroccan ancestral culinary traditions.

Thirty kilometres from Marrakech, the Jardin Potager Bio Orty-CT (Organic Vegetable Garden) has been established by Chef Tarik Harabida, and is devoted to the re-discovery of organic and authentic culinary traditions, many dating back to ancient times and drawing from the diverse roots of Moroccan cultures – Berber, Jewish and Arab-Andalusian.

Taking traditional herbs and spices picked from his own garden, the rich and flowery aromas of cinnamon, saffron, thyme, cumin and ginger, amongst others, Chef Tarik combines them with condon bleu cuisine, guiding his students through personal recipes created to show traditional Moroccan gastronomy at its very best. The result is a unique dining experience in a tranquil setting far from the clamour of Marrakech.

ateliercuisinebio.blogspot.com (in French only)

Ramadan is almost over, but while the hour of sunset varies world wide and dictates when you can break your fast, it is one of the most important moments that unite Muslims worldwide.

Derek Workman samples the celebration in Spain.

When I enter the restaurant at nine in the evening I’m the first to arrive, so I stand at the bar chatting to brothers Oumelaz and Redouane. We are in darkness, other than the the flicker of light from a football match on the wide-screen television, a sport that leaves me cold, although I enjoy it more than I usually would because the commentator is getting very excited in Arabic and the text scroll along the bottom of the screen means absolutely nothing to me.

At four placings on each of the six tables is a saucer with a few dates, a hard-boiled egg, and chabakia, the traditional Ramadan sweetmeat that gives a sugar boost after a long day of fasting, made worse this year by the long summer days and higher than usual temperatures.

At 9.05 the first customers walk in, three young men built like the gym is their home-from-home. The lights are switched on and business begins.

By 9.07 the small restaurant is full, mainly with men, apart from one table where the poor mother is struggling to keep her bouncy daughter still. The brothers serve each client msamen amer, a pan-fried pancake filled with red pepper, onion and tomatoe – pizza maroqui, as Redouane laughingly calls it. Everyone chats amiably, waiting for three more minutes to pass before they can begin their evening meal, just before which, a bowl of spicy harira soup is served.

At 9.10 the football is switched over to prayers from Mecca and everyone begins to eat. Despite the amount of time I’ve spent in Morocco, this is my first iftar, the Ramadan evening meal, and I’m not spending it in Marrakech, or Fez, or a small village in the High Atlas, I’m in Bar Capricho II on Calle Sueca, just around the corner from my flat in the Valencian barrio of Ruzafa.

Ruzafa has been a working-class barrio of immigrants before the word was even invented;  the name comes from Arabic, so it’s not surprising we have a large Moroccan population. Even though I buy my merguez, couscous and preserved lemons from a Moroccan-owned shop, go to a very basic caff for a cup of mint-tea, chat occasionally with friends at the local Magreb Association, and pass the Arabic bookshop on my way to the park, it never actually occurred to me that the cafes would work to a Ramadan schedule. At least until last night it didn’t, when I wandered past Capricho II.

So that’s why I’m here, sharing a table with chatty Mostapha and smiling but silent Hamid. As I finish off my boiled egg, bowl of harira, msamen, Mostapha points to the TV screen and complains how expensive it is to make Haj, the trip to Mecca that all Muslims aspire to, how expensive it is to live in London, at least according to his brother who lives there, and how very happy he is to have a foreigner share his table at such a special time in the Muslim calendar. Over the meatballs and chicken kebabs, he tells me that it’s not surprising to see the English sub-titles with the commentary and readings from the Koran on television because in many Arab countries English is the second language, and many Muslims born and bred in English-speaking countries don’t speak Arabic.

As I drink my mint tea, Mostapha thanks me for the conversation, wishes me goodnight and leaves. I finish my tea and do the same, thanking Oumelaz and Redouane for allowing me to share their Ramadan meal. As I walk home I think how much I’ve enjoyed the experience, but feel extremely grateful that I don’t have to be up at four in the morning to have breakfast.

Wander along the port at Essaouira at around noon on most days and you will see fishing boats unloading their shimmering catches as they’ve done for hundreds of years. Boxes of fish are set up on stalls or simply laid along the quayside, where locals buy their lunch and restaurants stock up for their fancy diners, the price depending on how good you are at haggling or what’s left as the crushed ice they lie on melts.

The life of a small scale fisherman has always been a hard one; up a four a.m. to check if the weather will allow them to put to sea, paying out for petrol and boat rental, even if the nets come home empty, and splitting the proceeds of the sale of his catch with crew members. But the five-year U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Small-Scale Fisheries Project aims to improve the lives of fishermen throughout Morocco, typically some of the country’s poorest residents by modernizing the means of catching, storing and marketing fish, and help fishermen get access to both local and export markets. As much as anything, the project is helping the vendors who trundle through small villages selling the fish they buy on the quayside each day.

On most days, Essaid Sadik would arrive at a port shortly after the first fishing boats docked. He would buy what he could and then drive to nearby villages and start selling – usually sardines and other small fish. As temperatures rose during the day, the fish sometimes began to spoil, occasionally making him and his customers sick.

Now Sadik is one of about 600 mobile fish vendors to receive a new heavy-duty, three-wheeled motorcycle and training through the project. His motorbike is equipped with an insulated ice chest to help preserve the quality of the fish and its value, and can keep fish fresh for up to 48 hours. He has received training which covered marketing, proper hygiene, product handling, quality preservation, small business management, access to financial services, and formation of associations and cooperatives.

Sadik is proud of the uniform his cooperative provides, white coats, matching hats and Wellington boots. “It’s not just nice – it’s really, really nice,” said Sadik, a father of two. “We have a newfound dignity because of the project.”

The name Fifi Abodo might not spring readily to a westerner’s mind, but to any lover of belly dancing her name is the first to spring to mind. She has shimmied and shaked for over twenty years and at a recent sports and art charity event in Morocco the famous Egyptian belly dancer showed that even at sixty her hips still had their gyratory power to pull in the fans.

Mid-show the ever explosive Fifi suddenly climbed on stage and did what she does best, swirled her hips and other parts of her voluptuous body to the surprise and total delight of the crowd, who showered her with cash.

Which just goes to show that age is all in the mind of the beholder – and other shakeable body bits!

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than 314 million blind and visually impaired persons in the world, 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries. The World Blind Union estimates that of the million or so books published worldwide every year, less than five per cent are made available in formats accessible to visually impaired persons. A historic treaty signed in Marrakesh last Friday is expected to boost hundreds of millions of blind or visually impaired people’s access to books.  

Laboriously named the ‘Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or otherwise Print Disabled’ allows the waiver of copyright restrictions in order for books to be available in formats such as Braille, large print text and audio books.

After more than a week of intense debate, the 800 delegates from the World  Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)’s 186 member countries reached a  compromise, primarily on limiting copyright restrictions.

“This treaty… allows people to be able to borrow or get access to books produced in an alternate format in one country and share it with persons in another country. This is a really important thing,” said Maryanne Diamond, president of the World Blind Union, adding, “It’s been a very long battle.”  

Jace Nair, head of the South African National Council for the Blind, emphasised the impact it would have in Africa with its disproportionately large blind population. “In Africa, we’ll be in a better position to get a greater access to information and knowledge… (which) is going to improve the quality of our education, improve access to education, access to health services and active  participation in civic life.” Securing the treaty was “a very emotional moment,” he added.

Blind music legend Stevie Wonder was in Marrakesh for the celebrations, calling the treaty, which comes after years of negotiations and resistance from rights holders, “a new beginning”.  

No stranger to international negotiations, Marrakech was where the World Trade Organisation was established almost two decades ago.

Hundreds of traditional and contemporary collections by 300 master artisans never before seen outside of Morocco will be on display in the first large-scale artisan event ever in in the country, showcasing in Morocco’s design capital, Marrakech. The Artisan Expo will take place from June 12-16, is being marketed as the first international exhibition of Moroccan craftsmanship and it is hoped it will present a real trading platform with the exhibition bringing together artisans and professionals such as importers, exporters, distributors, and designers.

For further information contact info@expoartisanmaroc.com