New York Festival To Revive “The Battle of Algiers” After 50 Years Of Presentation

Alexandria Festival of Mediterranean Film will celebrate in its 32nd edition, the Algerian revolution on September 21 and 27, and in parallel to this, the 54th New York International Film Festival will celebrate on September 30-October 16, “The Battle of Algiers” movie that was directed by the Italian Gillo Pontecorvo.

American gesture for  “TheBattle of Algiers” will be a “revival” of the 50th anniversary of its presentation in 1967 at its fifth session for the first time at the opening of the festival that was organised by the Film Society of Lincoln Center since 1963.

In context, this edition will present many of the films that mark the history of cinema like ( L’Argent/ money/ 1983) which was directed by the French Robert Bresson, (Harln County USA / 1976) by the American director Barbara Kopple, (Ugetu Monogatari) by the Japanese director Kenji Mizukoshi, and (Panic) by the French Julian Duvivier.

Algerian movie “The Battle of Algiers”, which is an Algerian-Italian production, won many international awards including the “Golden Lion” award for the best film of the Venice Film Festival (Venice / Italy) in 1996, and was also nominated twice for the Oscar in 1967 and 1969.

This movie, which achieved remarkable success and is still considered one of the amazing films in the history of cinema, embodied the struggle of the Algerian people against the French colonialism through popular struggle of the inhabitants of Algiers.

France blocked, for nearly half a century, this movie, which is a clear condemnation of its crimes against Algerians, and the film was introduced in 2012 in several US film festivals, on the occasion of Algeria’s fiftieth anniversary of independence, as it was programmed in New York, Pennsylvania and California, in the same context, the International Festival of the Arab Film in Oran, celebrated, a few days ago its ninth edition, “The battle of Algiers”.