The film The Battle of Algiers (Italy/Algeria, 1966) is a figure for liberation and it can still communicate a sense of euphoria to those who experience and study it. The purpose of this book is to account for this power in terms of the film’s complexity and ambivalence—in terms, that is, of the film’s ‘impure’ means. Building on a large body of scholarship, the book focuses on the key themes of location, address and temporality. What is the precise role of the city of Algiers in the film? What are the consequences of its address to multiple audiences, including those in the old colonizing North? What are the effects of the film’s activity of reenactment and what can these tell us about revolutionary agency? Ultimately, the account here of the power of The Battle of Algiers is intended to shed light on the means and capacities of historical and political cinema as such.
