the battle of algiers (w&d. gillo pontecorvo, w. franco solinas)

Doubt there is very much I could say that hasn’t been said before about this remarkable film, which seems to offer a template for political filmmaking, with percussive edit, sound and music, interweaving dramatic scenes within a historical context, that has never been adopted. Rather, political filmmaking tends to be relegated to talky TV shows where the screenwriter’s dialogue skills are put to the test, and the cinematic aesthetics remain secondary. The power of TBoA comes from the mesmeric use of sound and camera, as the viewer is taken into the radical heart of the casbah. The colonial forces, echoing events today in Palestine, seek to control the local population, but no matter how much they think they’re winning, they’re not. Wanton bombings, carefully controlled gates into and out of the ghetto: this all feels far too familiar. The need for colonial forces to regulate societies they occupy will always be confronted by an enemy for whom the collective patria has more value than an individual fate. 

soula (w&d salah issad, w. soula bahri)

Soula tells the tale of its eponymous heroine, a young woman with a child born out of wedlock, desperately trying to keep it together in spite of the fact she is a social outcast. Soula is a free spirit, who enjoys the things young women all over the world enjoy: drinking, smoking, hanging out, having fun. But in the society she inhabits, this isn’t encouraged. The film is made up of various chapters set over the course of around 12 hours, each time stamped, as we follow the course of a tragic day. Soula flees from her home, is betrayed by her friend, raped, picked up by her crazy cousin, who sets out to drive her 300kms with his newly arrived friend from France to a party town on the coast. In the midst of all this she has to try to ensure her baby daughter is safe. The film and Soula’s crazy night ends in predictable tragedy. The film does a vigorous job of representing the way in which women are maltreated in Algeria, and the hairline fractures that exist in a society seeking to balance western liberalism with the perceived social conditioning of religion.