Ciné Club - Political Violence: Screen Image, Hidden Meaning

Ciné Club
Political Violence: Screen Image, Hidden Meaning
Film screening & Discussion

Cine Club Screening
In collaboration with Italian Cultural Center

The Battle of Algiers / La Bataille d’Alger
6.00 p.m.

AFD kicks off a ciné-club season of political cinema with a special screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film La Bataille d’Alger (The Battle of Algiers). This classic film was banned in France for five years after its release because of its highly controversial depiction of French colonial power in pre-independence Algeria. It has, uniquely for narrative cinema, been screened at numerous political institutions including at the Pentagon just before the start of the Iraq War in 2003.
Pontecorvo’s film charts the bloody escalation of events during Algeria’s struggle for independence from France, beginning in 1954. With its graphically explicit style of realistic re-enactment, Pontecorvo’s film juxtaposes the divergent narratives of the small revolutionary cell in the old city led by Ali La Pointe, former thief and now charismatic darling of the FLN liberation movement, with the French army paratroopers led by the Colonel Mathieu determined to root out the insurgency. The violence intensifies as both sides resort to ever more desperate means to achieve their ends. Few films depict political violence with such an unflinchingly brutal gaze, reminding contemporary viewers of the profound trauma that the struggle for independence caused both in Algeria and France. Even while the sheer might of Mathieu’s army appears to be winning the Battle of Algiers, France did finally lose the war.

Panel Discussion
8.15 - 9.00 p.m.

The screening will be followed by discussion with leading film scholars Dr. Alan O’Leary (University of Leeds) and Dr. Aruna Vasudev (NETPAC, Cinefan, Cinemaya). This session will examine the complex connection between political violence and its communication through the medium of cinema: can political conflict be adequately represented on film? What are the ethics of such a representation? Is there such a thing as political cinema and what does the term mean? How do the codes employed by the political medium translate into the visual? Given the ‘society of spectacle’ in which we live what is the nature of the interplay between political violence and its depiction on screen?