PATHER PANCHALI by Satyajit Ray

The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo

OCCUPATION AND TORTURE

What a film! As fresh today as it was when it was made in the 60s. And with just as many lessons for us all to learn from it and the events it reconstructs. Unfortunately, sometimes, some of us read from it lessons that are a little out of whack! Consider the November, 18, 2001 piece in the LA Times entitled "The Movie that got it Right". That piece quotes the Rand Corporation's Bruce Hoffman as saying that "The Battle of Algiers is the best film there is [on terrorism]". Hoffman goes on to say that "the main message of the film is that without intelligence and information, you can't effectively combat terrorism." Is that in fact the message of the film? Or is it a case here of the dominant's discourse (the fear of the loss of power over others) veiling the other discourses (freedom, the struggle against colonialism, independence, self-determination). It's rather handy to forget that the Algerians were fighting for control of their own land and their lives against an invading power and to regard them as terrorists. Maybe Hoffman is referring to intelligence gathering and information on the part of the Algerians?

And then, in Entertainment magazine, in 2003, reviewing the new release of the Battle of Algiers DVD set, the reviewer OG (Original Gangster?) tells us that the film "Pontecorvo's raw, seismic vision of a Marxist uprising was all but unprecedented in its firebrand atmosphere of documentary realism." I don't really remember anyone in the film spouting Marxism...unless every single freedom and liberation movement can be called Marxist. Could it just be that Algerians were tired of having the French run their country for them? Does every uprising against a colonial, imperialist or any other imposed power have to be Marxist or fundamentalist in some way?

In any case, this film is very current for a variety of reasons. Consider the Colonel's press conference and the discussion of the use of torture in order to achieve his ends (see clip above).

Here are three films you might watch along these lines that look at a similar phenomenon from a different point of view...


One of the most influential films in the history of political cinema, Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers focuses on the events of 1957, a key year in Algeria's struggle for independence from France. Shot in the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film vividly re-creates the tumultuous Algerian uprising against the occupying French. The violence soon escalates on both sides in this war drama that's astonishingly relevant today.



Director:

Gillo Pontecorvo
Cast:
Brahim Haggiag Jean Martin
Yacef Saadi Samia Kerbash
Ugo Paletti Fusia El Kader






Filipino-American Adam (Ian Gamazon) comes face to face with contemporary geopolitical realities when he returns to his homeland to attend his father's funeral. Barely off the plane, Adam receives a chilling phone call saying Muslim terrorists have abducted and will kill his mother and sister if he doesn't comply with the radicals' demands. As the stakes grow exponentially, Adam must confront impossible choices in this fast-paced indie thriller.

Rated NR Not rated. This movie has not been rated by the MPAA.
Length:
80 minutes

Director:
Neill Dela Llana
Ian Gamazon

Cast:
Ian Gamazon Dominique Gonzalez
Jeffrey Lagda




Hany Abu-Assad's disturbing yet moving tale finds two men at a critical juncture in their lives. They've been drafted as suicide bombers in an upcoming assignment in Tel Aviv. Granted a night to spend with their families, they go home but are unable to say goodbye for fear of tipping their hand. But perhaps it isn't time for farewells yet as the two become separated during the mission and must decide on their own whether to continue or bail out.
Rated PG-13 For mature thematic material and brief strong language
Length:
90 minutes
Director:
Hany Abu-Assad

Cast:
Kais Nashef Ali Suliman
Lubna Azabal Amer Hlehel
Hiam Abbass Ashraf Barhom
Mohammad Bustami





After he's mistakenly arrested on suspicion of terrorism, Hassan (Ayad Akhtar), a Pakistani student, is so angry and offended that he joins the ranks of a New York-based terrorist cell that's planning an attack. But keeping his new life secret from his former best friend, Sayeed -- who's living the American Dream in New Jersey -- proves difficult, especially after Hassan falls in love with Sayeed's sister (Nandana Sen).

Rated R For violent images, some language and nudity
Length:
93 minutes

Director:
Joseph Castelo

Cast:
Ayad Akhtar Firdous Bamji
Nandana Sen Sarita Choudhury
Charles Daniel Sandoval Varun Sriram
Anjeli Chapman John Ventimiglia
Mike McGlone Aasif Mandvi

Interview with Beth Accomando on KPBS

My Brother is an only Child

San Diego Italian Film Festival

The 2010 Italian Film Festival in San Diego runs from October 22nd to Nov. 5 ... check films etc. at www.sandiegoitalianfilmfestival.com

LADRI DI BICICLETTE Vittorio De Sica

HERE IS THE STILL THAT I WILL ASK YOU TO WRITE ABOUT FOR TUESDAY'S QUIZ...
HAVE A GOOD LOOK...THINK ABOUT WHAT IT REPRESENTS AND MEANS...SHORT QUIZ 15 MIN. BE CLEAR, CONCISE, DIRECT...ADDRESS THE PHOTO AND THE FILM IT IS TAKEN FROM...GIVE THE CONTEXT WITHIN NEOREALISM AND MAYBE RELATE IT TO WHAT DE SICA AND ZAVATTINI HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE ROLE OF CINEMA (see Bondanella)...

Rocco and his Brothers: 3 Moments

Nadia tells Rocco that she has spent time in prison and he tells her that back home he has friends who have stood up for themselves, people who have occupied land and have been imprisoned for it. Rocco tells the story in a very matter-of-fact way, as if it were an everyday occurrence, a simple fact of life in the South...a hint of the situation that has come to be known as The Southern Question (See translation of Antonio Gramsci's The Southern Question, Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2006)

After winning a big fight, Rocco celebrates with his family...they now live up a few stories...they started out in a basement and have moved up in the world. The brothers take turns in toasting their success...however Vincenzo can only come up with some lame rhyme...Ciro demontrates that he has forgotten his language, the language of their land and so it is left up to Rocco, again, to make a meaninful statement. Again, his references are to their land, their traditions, the struggle of their people in the South...and he makes a reference to Luca's future visit to the South where he will act as a bridge between the old ways and the new, tradition and innovation, subservience and freedom...Luca is, in terms of the Southern Question, the intellectual who embodies the progress of the workers and the integrations of a proletarian body with the soul of a peasant...

Luca and Ciro meet to talk about Simone having been taken away by the police...and the rest of the family...Ciro now represents the working class, the industrial worker...a step up on the social evolutionary scale...he will impart the politicized lessons onto Luca...Luca will in turn integrate those lessons and the others learned from his life in the North to the lessons regarding the South that he hears mostly around the house. Luca will possibly be the Gramscian "organic intellectual" who will go back South at some point and organize his constituency into a viable bloc of "active" individuals (intellectuals).

ROME, OPEN CITY by Roberto Rossellini

Excerpts from “A Few Words about Neo-realism”
by Roberto Rossellini

[…] Neo-realism is the greatest possible curiosity about individuals: a need, appropriate to modern man, to speak of things as they are, to be aware of reality, in an absolutely concrete manner, conforming to that typically contemporary interest in statistical and scientific results; a sincere need, as well, to see men with humility, as they are, without resorting to stratagems in order to invent the extraordinary; to be aware of being able to arrive at the extraordinary through inquiry itself; a reality, whatever it is, in order to attain an understanding of things. To give anything its true value means to have understood its authentic and universal meaning.

[…] The subject of neo-realist film is the world; not story or narrative. It contains no preconceived thesis, because ideas are born in the film from the subject. It has no affinity with the superfluous and the merely spectacular, which it refuses, but is attracted to the concrete. It does not remain on the surface, but seeks out the most subtle aspects of the soul. It refuses recipes and formulas in its search for the motivating forces in each of us. Briefly, neo-realism poses problems for us and for itself in an attempt to make people think.

[…] Anyway, it cannot be doubted that I began by putting the accent on the collective above all. It was the war itself which motivated me; war and resistance are collective actions by definition.




TERMS AND PARAMETERS

Rossellini's Roma, citta' aperta represents one of the first expressions of what came to be labeled "neo-realism".
Though not all prints of the film carry this, some display the following narrative at the beginning of the film
projected over scenes of Rome, the eternal city, and symbols of Christianity

"While the Nazis held Rome in their iron grip after the summer of 1943, a group of Italian film-makers were planning underground a motion-picture record of the terrors inflicted on their compatriots in the declared “open city”. Working behind barred doors, in cellars and attics, in ravines and hills outside Rome, they prepared their scenario.
The day the Allied Armies marched in, the producers and actors went ahead using equipment much of which had been
stolen from the Germans at the cost of Italian lives. Without studio lights, with electricity often unobtainable, and
restricted to old scraps of film, they completed Open City, the 1st post-war Italian picture. Except for a handful
of principals, the cast consists of ordinary Roman citizens picked off the streets and the scenes were filmed at the
exact location of the particular incidents."

This intro to the film gives a brief definition of the scope, technique and rhetoric that guided the production.

Rossellini's own definition of Neo-realism was:

"an interior state, a way of feeling, a humble representation of the world, an act of courage that aspires to accept man
as he is" ... which can be read as a commitment to the immediate socio-political situation in which he lived and functioned...the end of Fascism.

Neo-realism, as a filmic technique/style that proposed to represent "a slice of life" set in the present, also included in
its arsenal some of the following...on location shooting, use of non-actors, emphasis on popular speech, the rejection of contrived or elaborate plots, frequent improvisation, objective camera...

Useful terms associated with neo-realism:

realism, naturalism, verismo, Italian Socialist Party (PSI), Italian Communist Party (PCI), Christian Democrats (DC), Benito Mussolini, March on Rome, Antonio Gramsci, LUCE (L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa), CSC (Centro Sperimentale Cinematografico), CLN (Committee for National Liberation). history from below.