The Algerian War of Independence: Cinema as History
January 18–February 26, 2023
Over the course of the six decades since the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), filmmakers have reacted to the history of this revolutionary period with powerful responses and insightful perspectives. This selection of films deal with the backstory and history of the Algerian War of Independence from a variety of perspectives.
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The Battle of Algiers
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Chronicle of the Years of Embers
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Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
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Le petit soldat
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October 17, 1961
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Caché
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The Undeclared War
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Chronicle of the Years of Embers
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina
Algeria, 1975Digital Restoration
Wednesday, January 18 7 PMIntroduced by Soraya TlatliView DetailsAn Algerian farmer lives through drought, colonial injustice, and the dawn of independence in this astounding combination of African revolutionary fervor, Bollywood-style pulp, and Cinemascope beauty. “The most magnificent film to ever come from the Third World” (Albert Johnson).
The Battle of Algiers
Gillo Pontecorvo
Italy, 1966Thursday, January 19 7 PMView DetailsOne of the best films on revolution ever made, Pontecorvo’s agit-prop classic concerns Algeria’s struggle for independence against its French overlords. “A masterpiece! Surely the most harrowing political epic ever” (New Yorker).
The Olive Trees of Justice
James Blue
France, 1962Digital Restoration
Thursday, January 26 7 PMView DetailsBlue tells a powerful story of common people living and struggling in their daily lives, while providing a valuable testimony to the complexity of the Algerian struggle for independence. “A neorealist take on the Algerian War made with nonprofessional actors is newly restored and still resonates today” (J. Hoberman, New York Times).
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
Isaac Julien
United Kingdom, 1995Thursday, February 2 7 PMView DetailsCombining archival footage, interviews with experts, and stark depictions of the Algerian revolution from The Battle of Algiers with dramatized tableaux to extend theorist Frantz Fanon’s challenge to people of all races, director Julien creates an intellectually provocative portrait of Fanon.
October 17, 1961
Alain Tasma
France, 2005Friday, February 10 7 PMView DetailsInspired by the fiction/documentary blends of such socially committed British filmmakers as Alan Clarke and Ken Loach, and by the incendiary force of The Battle of Algiers, director Tasma reimagines an event that has been shamefully ignored in France’s textbooks, but whose scars still linger.
In Mansourah, You Separated Us
Dorothée-Myriam Kellou
Algeria, France, 2019BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Sunday, February 12 4 PMView DetailsFrench filmmaker Kellou accompanies her father, Malek, on his return home to the village of Mansourah, Algeria, for the first time since his childhood. Mansourah was one of thousands of communities turned into resettlement camps by the French military. With Drowning by Bullets, which reveals a story that quickly died, suppressed by the French government and a complicit press.
Le petit soldat
Jean-Luc Godard
France, 1963Friday, February 17 7 PMView DetailsWhile it deflates the thriller genre with all manner of narrative diversions, Le petit soldat was banned for three years in France for deflating another type of fiction: the myth of French antiterrorist heroism in general, and in particular the idea that antiterrorist groups were “above” using torture.
Algeria, Year Zero
Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Jean-Pierre Sergent
France, 1962Sunday, February 19 5 PMView DetailsThe groundbreaking documentary Algeria, Year Zero, filmed just months after the end of the war, was initially censored in both Algeria and France. With two rare short films, I Am Eight Years Old, which reveals the effects of the war on refugee children, and Algeria in Flames, wartime footage from the National Liberation Army’s perspective.
Caché
Michael Haneke
France, Austria, Germany, Italy, 2005Friday, February 24 7 PMView Details“The mystery behind a series of anonymous videotapes that appear on the doorstep of a middle class Parisian family gradually turns into a metaphor about the First World’s fear of violence it has itself created and then repressed from consciousness” (Deborah Young, Variety).
The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting
Assia Djebar
Algeria, 1982Saturday, February 25 4:30 PMIntroduce by Soraya TlatliView DetailsAlgerian novelist and filmmaker Djebar’s experimental The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting reinterprets French colonial newsreel footage from the period 1912–42, giving voice to those who were once silenced. With The Women, a testament to the call for women’s emancipation in Algeria.
The Undeclared War
Bertrand Tavernier
France, 1992Digital Restoration
Sunday, February 26 1:30 PMView DetailsAssembled from fifty hours of footage, the film focuses on twenty-eight veterans—all conscripts and of every shade of political conviction. The film’s remarkable power and universality lies in the human dimension of these veterans, as they bring the events of the past to life with searing and enlightening honesty.
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