In this session we are exploring the creative producer as activist and vice-versa. We are beaming the 1966 masterpiece The Battle of Algiers, a story following the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government. 

Program 

19:00-19:30 Hangout and screening of a 20 minute interview with Yacef Saadi. 

Yacef was one of the leaders of Algeria's National Liberation Front during his country's war of independence, author of the book Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger, and one of the film's producers.  

20:00-22:00 The Battle of Algiers (1966) 

Using archive footage and unflinchingly real reconstructions, The Battle of Algiers portrays the events that occurred in the capital city of French Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence. 

Beginning with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah, the film documents the warfare between Muslims and Pied-Noir in which both sides carry out acts of increasing violence, culminating in the introduction of French army paratroopers to hunt down the National Liberation Front (FLN).

Saadi Yacef joined the FLN during the beginning of the Algerian War in 1954 and within two years became the FLN's military chief of the Autonomous Zone of Algiers. He was captured by French troops in 1957 and wrote his memoirs of the battle in prison. 

Yacef went on to produce Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers in 1966 which was based on his memoirs. Part of this beaming session is to contemplate and discuss how one translates resistance into film-making as a form of activism, especially in terms of self-representation. 

Language: film in Arabic and French with English Subtitles

----------------------------------------- 

The M{IF} Society of Cinema is a part of the Museum of Impossible Forms and is both a platform and space for watching films and making cinema.