Battle of Algiers Trailer
The trailer is fantastic too! I love the soundtrack of this film. Ennio Morricone got the deserved lifetime achievement academy award last year. The trailer has a part of the soundtrack too. Of course it depends on how the soundtrack is used in the film so the director should get the credit too. The main theme starts around the middle. Also love the way it boasts, "containing not a single frame of documentary or news footage."
One also can't help but compare it with what is happening in Iraq now and despair about how worse things have become. The valiant anti-imperialist struggle of the Algerians (FLN), though violent and morally compromised and based on Islamic ideology, was still an honourable one. Can only wish if we could say the same about the current breed of anti-imperialist warriors who are ready with their own agenda of fascism.
8 comments:
The film is playing at Cinefan (in a section called "Hymns to Freedom") but I had to miss it. Pity, because I saw it on a very poor-quality video print many years ago and just couldn't get into it at the time.
The criterion DVD of the film is fantastic too. It contains loads of features including a terrific documentary profile of Potecorvo by Edward Said. Also interviews of Steven Soderbergh, Mira Nair, Spike Lee and others. Worth hunting for...
I think I told you once before how much I love this film....the DVD is really excellent and the bonus materials are very educational.
Btw, I think I reccomended Z as well. It has a brilliant soundtrack too.
yes you did recommend Z. I havent managed to find a DVD yet :(
Might have to order online.
oredring a dvd would be completely worth it in my opinion
On what basis do you say that the FLN struggle was morally compromised? the FLN ideology was not Islamic but nationalist and socialist. even if it were Islamic, w'd that make it any less inferior?
Where have you got hold of this opinion? I hope you don't mind sharing it.....
morally compromised was perhaps too strong a word. I meant the indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Though the film brilliantly illustrates the logic of guerrilla struggle and asymmetric warfare. Also much of its politics was regressive, based as it was on religion. Though again it seems far more benign than the religion inspired resistance movements we see now, as in Iraq for example.
How can an entire people forget the elements of their past when they decide to struggle? Where can they draw their inspiration from? Obviously from their past, their religion, if they have one and their common world view, their weltenschuaang. All militant struggles are morally questionable, all wars, all ideologies appear bad to the opponent.The task must be to understand why, the reasons why people must revolt and the reasons why some people are subjugated.
And what about State Terrorism and rational terror, so brilliantly written , for example by Albert Camus, himself a French -Algerian?
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