Laying bare the social and economic structures of oppression to reconstruct a national psyche from the ruins – how an idea caught on.

 

The film shows a popular revolution above all else.

Fracking has raised major concerns for its substantial use of water (particularly worrying for the Sahara) and for the potential leaking of these chemical substances into groundwater.

It was the French colonisers, after all, who were bound to international conventions that govern the practice of harm in a way that a small groups of individuals like the Algerians, were not.

Cinematic representations of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation frequently invoke The Battle of Algiers as a point of reference. This reflects a long history of Palestinian identification with the Algerian independence movement and more specifically with Pontecorvo’s film.

What the Islamist terrorist threat has become is an incoherent pretext to intervene militarily on the part of the west. The only principled position to adopt therefore is the rejection of both, for the self-determination and sovereignty of the peoples.

The festival director of the London Middle East and North Africa Film Festival talks about the place of Pontecorvo’s film within the history of the region’s cinema and about its future.

 

A 2006 documentary by Yves Boisset uses uncredited extracts from the film, mixed in with actual news reels, without stating that the film was made nine years after the events which it relates to. Fiction has become a historical document. 

The bitter divisions within the FLN are ignored. Instead, Gillo Pontecorvo, in his 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers, presents the war uniquely in terms of the FLN against the French paratroopers. We begin a new series exploring the many facets of this remarkable film.

Continuing the openDemocracy series marking fifty years of Algerian independence, one of the series editors, Martin Evans, explores Algerian history through six objects.   Lecture (6,500 words)

We want to open up a public conversation which will situate the country’s history, society and politics within the wider context of the Arab World; one that will be finely attuned to specificities and generalities as we explore what Algerians aspire to for them and their country in the twenty-first century.

This Maghrebi state has so far been spared the domino effect of recent revolts in the region. The iconic slogan, “the people want to topple the regime” has been remarkably absent from the protests, and the stability of Algeria is seen in the west as pivotal to the continuation of the process of change in the whole Maghreb.

Algeria’s fratricidal war has divided democrats, seriously damaged civil society and left a political vacuum in the face of the ruling parties. There is almost no opposition with a proper base that can take the demands of the people forward.