Separated from Europe by a tiny sliver of a strait called Gibraltar, Tangier has always been fertile ground for eccentrics and extremists. According to homegrown artist Yto Barrada, Morocco’s chaotic and quirky port city couldn’t be more distinct from touristic and trendy Marrakech, some 300 miles to the south. “Tangier attracts a very different crowd. We like the humidity. We like the mildew. We’re book-reading, flea-market people who are more introverted and discreet and who collect extraordinary things.”

Barrada is telling me this in her office at the Cinématèque de Tanger within the newly renovated Tangier landmark, Cinema Rif. The 37-year-old petite brunette, who is currently preparing for multiple exhibits of her photography while acting as the cinema’s artistic director and programmer, rarely sits still; she paces and answers her cell phone and smokes cigarettes and searches through file cabinets. Her thoughts race days and years ahead: planning her next shot, her next show, and her next Tangerine institution to save.

Eight years ago the Art Deco-style Cinema Rif, built in 1948, was in dire straits. So was the Grand Socco, Tangier’s famous circular plaza on which the cinema stands. It was one of the most dangerous places in the city. “The cinema was for sale,” says Barrada. There was a chance that it could be torn down, and “it was half empty, just sitting there. There were crowds of men smoking hashish on the old seats watching scratchy Bollywood movies. Still, it was the kind of seedy but beautiful place that attracted people like Pedro Almodóvar, who liked to just soak up the atmosphere.”

At the time, Barrada was living in Paris but traveling frequently to Tangier to document the narrow but deep divide between Africa and Europe—a body of work that eventually became a traveling exhibit she named “A Life Full of Holes—the Strait Project.” She saw that after King Mohammed VI succeeded his father, Hassan II, in 1999, Morocco started becoming more modern and liberal (political prisoners were freed, banned artists allowed to work, and a human rights abuse commission was established). Barrada’s mother, a psychiatrist and activist, was running Darna, the women’s shelter she’d founded in 1995. And while this further inspired Barrada to move back to Tangier, she knew that first she needed her own project. “Where I come from you can’t come home with your hands empty,” she says. When she heard the Rif was for sale she knew that was the answer. “Everyone should have a good cinema,” she says. “I bought the lease in 2004, and I sat down with the old director and wrote grants and wrote grants and wrote grants.” The cinema closed for renovation in 2005, and in February 2006 the old Rif reopened as the Cinématèque de Tanger.

The space now houses a café, two theaters (the main one, seating 350, and a 52-seat screening room), a library, and a film archive. It was a collaboration between Barrada, French architect Jean-Marc Lalo, Tangier-based decorator Stéphane Salles, and Barrada’s husband, Sean Gullette, an actor and screenwriter (he co-wrote and starred in director Darren Aronofsky’s Pi). The first thing you notice about the new Rif is that Barrada’s art house films and visiting director programs haven’t chased the old customers away. You still see old men smoking (usually tobacco) and drinking coffee, but it has also attracted a whole new young crowd to the Grand Socco. Teenagers gossip in booths in the café and 20-somethings with laptops use the free Wi-Fi. The design is retro cool, but also very welcoming: Clusters of globe lights (designed by Gullette) hang over the banquettes, and artfully aged bistro mirrors and framed vintage movie magazines and photos decorate the walls. But the terrazzo floor and the staff are still original. “You don’t take a place with history and clean it out,” declares Barrada. “The people here have great stories to tell.”