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Anti-colonial violence and the 'dictatorship of the truth' in the films of Gillo Pontecorvo, an interview

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Neelam Srivastava

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Abstract

This article is a companion piece to my interview with the Italian film director Gillo Pontecorvo. The essay presents his two famous anti-colonial films, _The Battle of Algiers_ and _Burn!_, in the context of Pontecorvo’s life and work. I relate his anti-colonialism to his anti-fascism, as is evident in the film _Kapò_, whose protagonist is a Jewish girl struggling to survive in a Nazi concentration camp. His films were influenced by neo-realism and adopted a documentary style of film-making. I examine the strong intertextual links between The Battle of Algiers and Frantz Fanon’s writings that emerged out of his involvement with the Algerian war of independence against the French colonizers. I examine Fanon and Pontecorvo’s different approaches to violence in the context of the anti-colonial struggle.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Srivastava N

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Interventions

Year: 2005

Volume: 7

Issue: 1

Pages: 97-106

ISSN (print): 1369-801X

ISSN (electronic): 1469-929X

Publisher: Routledge

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801052000330379

DOI: 10.1080/1369801052000330379

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