"The Battle of Algiers" (Pontecorvo, 1966) was considered the best political film ever made by no less a figure than Edward Said. It is a classic of historical cinema, constantly discussed and influential to this day on art-house and popular cinema alike.

Algeria was colonized by France between 1830 and 1962, and "The Battle of Algiers" deals with the Algerian independence struggle. The ‘battle’ of the title was a relatively minor affair (1956-7) in the overall achievement of independence, but the focus on it allows an illustrative and symbolic use of location in the film’s spatial opposition between ‘European’ city and ‘Arab’ Casbah. The famous employment of the look of newsreel and tropes of realist filmmaking is matched by the film’s powerful use of soundtrack, propulsive editing and complex play with chronology.

"The Battle of Algiers" is a remarkable example of transnational filmmaking: it was commissioned by the Algerians themselves and made by Italians on location in Algiers itself, with dialogue in Arabic and French, and with an address that speaks ‘for’ the Algerian nation ‘to’ the wider world (perhaps to Europe and the North in particular). The complexity and appeal of the film’s consideration of the ethics and efficacy of violence, torture and terrorism is such that it is studied not only by scholars in cinema and postcolonial studies, but also by political scientists and specialists in war and security studies, and it is a key text for thinking about the representation of history.

Alan’s class will deal especially with the following themes. Firstly, location in the film, and in particular how the opposition between European city and Casbah is transgressed in the exhilarating coda, when we see protest marches emerge from housing projects constructed during the period of the historical battle of Algiers itself. Secondly, and using an idea of genre memory from Bakhtin, the class will consider how the film’s disavowed formal origins in Italian Fascist-period cinema might have something to tell us about the character of the postcolonial in later cinema (like the French "Banlieue" cinema of the 1990s). Finally, it will ask how a film celebrating the independence of a North African nation could be ‘receivable’ in the old colonizing North: what symbolisms and frames of representation (including Orientalist models) had to be employed?

Alan O'Leary is Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds (UK). He has published several books and many articles on Italian and other cinemas, including a piece entitled "The Battle of Algiers at Fifty: End of Empire Cinema and the First Banlieue Film", "Film Quarterly", December 2017. He has recently completed a short book on the film, forthcoming from Mimesis International (Milan). 

Time and date: November 9 2017 10-12

Place: Nobelparken 1453-125