Battle of Algiers director dead at 86

[Lautremont]

Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who is best known for his 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, has died at age 86.

Pontecorvo died at the Polyclinic Gemelli hospital in Rome on Thursday night, a hospital spokesman said. No cause of death was given, but he had recently suffered a heart attack.

Although he directed fewer than 20 films, Pontecorvo was regarded as one of Italy's greatest directors. The Battle of Algiers was a documentary-style black-and-white film that showed brutality on both sides in Algeria's war of independence from France.

(snip)

The film still resonates today in the fighting against the insurgency in Iraq. In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film to officers and civilian experts, promoting it with a leaflet that said: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas."

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/10/13/pontecorvo-obit.html


He had a good run The Battle of Algiers is an amazing movie - so much so that even the Pentagon recognized it.

[leftchick]

1. the pentagon had it screened before the Iraq invasion

but took away the wrong message.

50 years on, Algiers bomber sees US 'error' in Iraq

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3816042a12,00.html

What she could not have known was that her actions and those of her colleagues in the 1954-62 independence war, instead of fading into history, are the subject of unprecedented scrutiny among counter-terror specialists around the world.

The renewed interest is thanks to a decision by the US military in 2003 to screen the classic 1965 film about the war, The Battle of Algiers, for officers preparing for duty in Iraq.

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas," read a flyer for the film, a dramatized reconstruction of episodes in one of the world's bloodiest post-colonial wars.

If the idea was to understand why people rebel against occupation, Drif now says, the Pentagon's move was a failure.

[9119495]

2. Wow. I just watched the film Wednesday

when I was home sick. Such an amazing film...and boy did I ever see the parallels between then and now.

[kenny blankenship]

3. Also recommend "Burn!" directed by Pontecorvo with Marlon Brando

You have to adjust to Brando's intentionally bizarre accent -but the story and direction are very strong. How this movie has languished in obscurity so long beats me.

[pinerow]

4. Great film...right up there with Costa-Gavras' "Z" , his account

of the terror visited by the General's coup...

[onager]

5. Get the Criterion edition!

The Criterion release of Battle Of Algiers comes with a ton of extras, including some great interviews directly relating Algeria '56 to Iraq '03.

And it was about time this classic got a decent re-issue. The film wasn't available on DVD for WAY too long, and even the low-quality VHS version was hard to find until the Criterion re-issue.

Considering the current events in Iraq, one scene in the movie really resonates. Reporters are interviewing a captured Algerian guerilla and one of them asks something like this:

"You put bombs in baskets and deliberately kill innocent people. How can you justify that?"

He answers: "Your bombers are dropping napalm on innocent Algerian villagers. You give me your bombers, and I'll give you my baskets."