Screen/Society--Feminism & Freedom Film Series--"The Battle of Algiers"

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Screen/Society--Feminism & Freedom Film Series--"The Battle of Algiers"

Film Screening:

The Battle of Algiers
(Gillo Pontecorvo, 1967, 125 min, Italy, in French & other languages w/ English subtitles, B/W, DVD)

-- Introduced by Duke PhD Candidate Laura Jaramillo!

A powerful, almost documentary-like examination of the response to an occupying force, The Battle of Algiers hasn't aged a bit since its release in 1966. Director Gillo Pontecorvo presents a harrowing, depiction of the Algerian people's struggle to liberate themselves from France between 1954 and 1962. The film contains a number of stunning sequences with amateur and professional actors portraying characters based on real people (including Saadi Yacef, the one-time leader of the FLN in occupied Algiers).

With its depiction of political torture and violence retaining every bit of the impact they had upon the film's original release, The Battle of Algiers was re-released theatrically in 2003 to great acclaim and reevaluation.

"If any movie squeezes you into the shoes of grassroots combatants fighting a monstrous colonialist power for the right to their own neighborhoods, this is it."
-- Michael Atkinson, Village Voice

"One of the best movies about revolutionary and anticolonial activism ever made, convincing, balanced, passionate, and compulsively watchable as storytelling." -- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader 

 

-- Nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay

-- Winner of the Golden Lion and FIPRESCI critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Program in Women's Studies, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), and the International Comparative Studies Program (ICS).

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