Postcolonial Film History, Empire, Resistance

165 Pages·2014·27.235 MB·english

by  Rebecca Weaver-Hightower and Peter Hulme

p stcolonial Film
0
"This volume of essays brilliantly creates the groundwork for a truly interna
ional discussion. Film and its centrality to the ongoing colonial and postcolo
~ial debates in and between countries across the globe is its focus. The many
scholarly and accessible essays here will open readers' eyes to the truly global
reach of film and to the urgency of creating equitable postcolonial cultures."
-Lyn McCredden, Deakin University, Australia
"This collection of essays engages with traditional discourses in postcolo
nial studies in the light of recent developments pertaining to globalization, a
post-9/11 security planet, Islamic terrorism, infra-nationalisms, and intense
nomadism of populations. It is long awaited."
-Anustup Basu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance examines films of the later
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries from postcolonial countries
around the globe. In the mid-twentieth century, the political reality of resis
tance and decolonization led to the creation of dozens of new states, form
ing a backdrop to films of that period . Toward the century's end and at the
dawn of the new millennium, film continued to form a site for interrogating
colonization and decolonization, although against a backdrop that is now
more neocolonial than colonial and more culturally imperial than imperial.
This volume explores how individual films emerged from and commented
on postcolonial spaces and the building and breaking down of the European
empire. Each chapter is a case study examining how a particular film from
a postcolonial nation emerges from and reflects that nation's unique post
colonial situation. This analysis of one nation's struggle with its coloniality
allows each essay to investigate just what it means to be postcolonial.
Rebecca Weaver-Hightower is an Associate Professor of English specializing
in postcolonial studies at the University of North Dakota . She is author of
Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals and Fantasies of Conquest (2007),
Frontier Fictions: Settler Sagas and the Origins of Postcolonial White Guilt
(in progress), and Associate Editor of The Journal of Commonwealth and
Postcolonial Studies.
Peter Hulme is a Professor in Literature at the University of Essex and author,
most recently, of Cuba's Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente. He is
Assistant Editor of the journal Studies in Travel Writing.
15 Stardom and the Aesthetics of 23 Landscape and Memory in
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
Neorealism Post-Fascist Italian Film
Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini's Cinema Year Zero
Italy Giuliana Minghelli
Ora Gelley
24 Masculinity in the
16 Postwar Renoir Contemporary Romantic
Film and the Memory of Comedy
Violence Gender as Genre
Colin Davis John Alberti
Nation and Identity in the New 8 The Politics of Loss and Trauma
German Cinema in Contemporary Israeli 17 Cinema and Inter-American 25 Crossover Cinema
Homeless at Home Cinema Relations Cross-cultural Film from
Inga Scharf Raz Yosef Tracking Transnational Production to Reception
Affect Edited by Sukhmani Khorana
2 Lesbianism, Cinema, Space 9 Neoliberalism and Global Adrian Perez Melgosa
The Sexual Life of Apartments Cinema 26 Spanish Cinema in the Global
Lee Wallace Capital, Culture, and Marxist 18 European Civil War Films Context
Critique Memory, Conflict, and Film on Film
3 Post-War Italian Cinema Edited by Jyotsna Kapur and Nostalgia Samuel Amago
American Intervention, Vatican Keith B. Wagner Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou
Interests 27 Japanese Horror Films and
Daniela Treveri Gennari 10 Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 19 The Aesthetics of Anti fascism Their American Remakes
1893-1948 Radical Projection Translating Fear, Adapting Culture
4 Latsploitation, Exploitation The Untold History of the Film Jennifer Lynde Barker Valerie Wee
Cinemas, and Latin America lndust,y
Edited by Victoria Ruetalo and Brian Yecies with Ae-Gyung Shim 20 The Politics of Age and 28 Postfeminism and Paternity in
Dolores Tierney Disability in Contemporary Contemporary US Film
11 Transnational Asian Identities Spanish Film Framing Fatherhood
5 Cinematic Emotion in Horror in Pan-Pacific Cinemas Plus Ultra Pluralism Hannah Hamad
Films and Thrillers The Reel Asian Exchange Matthew J. Marr
The Aesthetic Paradox of Edited by Philippa Gates and 29 Cine-Ethics
Pleasurable Fear Lisa Funnell 21 Cinema and Language Ethical Dimensions of
Julian Hanich Loss Film Theory, Practice, and
12 Narratives of Gendered Dissent Displacement, Visuality and the Spectatorship
6 Cinema, Memory, Modernity in South Asian Cinemas Filmic Image Edited by Jinhee Choi and
The Representation of Memory Atka Kurian Tijana Mamula Mattias Frey
from the Art Film to Transnational
Cinema 13 Hollywood Melodrama and the 22 Cinema as Weather 30 Postcolonial Film
Russell J. A. Kilbourn New Deal Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric History, Empire, Resistance
Public Daydreams Change Edited by Rebecca Weaver
7 Distributing Silent Film Serials Anna Siomopoulos Kristi McKim Hightower and Peter Hulme
Local Practic es, Changing Forms,
Cultural Transformation 14 Theorizing Film Acting
Rudmer Canjels Edited by Aaron Taylor
Postcolonial Film
History, Empire, Resistance
Edited by Rebecca Weaver-Hightower
and Peter Hulme
I~
~o~~Jn~!;~u~p
NEWYORKANDLONDON
First published 2014
Contents
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY I 0017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an iiifiJrma business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now List of Figures IX
known or hereafier invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers. Introduction: New Perspectives on Postcolonial Film 1
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or REBECCA WEAVER-HIGHTOWER
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data PARTI
Postcolonial film : history, empire, resistance I edited by Rebecca New Readings of Twentieth-Century Anti-colonial
Weaver-Hightower and Peter Hulme. Resistance Narratives
pages cm. - (Routledge advances in film studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Politics in motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures- Political aspects.
1 Yesterday's Mujahiddin: Gilio Pontecorvo's
3. Imperialism in motion pictures. 4. Nationalism in motion pictures.
I. Weaver-Hightower, Rebecca, editor of compilation. II. Hulme, Peter, The Battle of Algiers (1966) 23
editor of compilation.
NICHOLAS HARRISON
PNl995.9.P6P68 2014
79 I .43'6582- dc23
2013041855 2 The Sound of Broken Memory: Assia Djebar's The Nuba
ISBN: 978-0-415-71614-7 (hbk) of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1977) 47
ISBN: 978-1-315-88006-8 (ebk)
SARAH E. MOSHER
Typeset in Saban
by Apex Co Vantage, LLC
3 Approximate Others: Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977) 63
Printed and bound in the United States of America by Publishers Graphics, JEROO RA'OEL HOLLYFIELD
LLC on sustainably sourced paper.
4 Life as an Ocean: Hou Hsiao-Hsien's
The Puppetmaster (1993) 87
STEPHEN SPENCE
PART II
Millennial Tropes of Neo-empire
5 Shifting Sands, Imaginary Space, and National Identity:
Cedric Klapisch's Peut-etre (1999) 115
JEHANNE-MARIE GAVARINI
v111 Contents
6 No Chains on Feet or Mind: Jean-Claude Flamand
Figures
Barny's Neg Maron (2005)
MEREDITH ROBINSON
7 A Cinema of Conviviality: Ray Lawrence's]indabyne (2006) 154
CORINN COLUMPAR
8 Deja Vu All Over Again: Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg (2007) 171
CYNTHIA SUGARS
PART III
1.1 From The Battle of Algiers, A woman remonstrates
New Imaginations of Neo-postcolonialism
with a drunkard. 32
1.2 From The Battle of Algiers, The drunkard assaulted
,.,,.,
9 Identity and the Politics of Space: Fatih Akm's by children.
.) .)
The Edge of Heaven (2007) 201
2.1 From The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua,
VUSLAT DEMIRI<OPARAN The seventh bride of Chenoua opening the communal jars. 54
2.2 From The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua,
10 Space and Cultural Memory: Te-Sheng
A bilingual road sign in Chenoua. 61
Wei's Cape No. 7 (2008) 223
3.1 From The Last Wave, Chris (David Gulpilil) and Charlie
YU-WEN FU
(Nandjiwarra Amagula) arrive for dinner at David's home. 75
3.2 From The Last Wave, David Burton (Richard Chamberlain)
11 The Postcolonial Hybrid:
questions Chris about the existence of tribal killings at
Neill Blomkamp 's District 9 (2009)
the murder trial as the tribe looks on in the foreground . 80
247
REBECCA WEAVER-HIGHTOWER
4.1 From The Puppetmaster, An example of Hou's movement
along an axis and his use of sets to reframe the action
12 The Marginal Interventionist Cinema of Budhan
within the frame. 98
Theatre: Dakxin Bajrange Chhara's
The Lost Water (2010) 267 4.2 From The Puppetmaster, Tienlu addresses the audience
directly from within a set depiction of a scene from his
HENRY SCHWARZ
own life. 100
13 Afterword: History, Empire, Resistance 282 5.1 From Peut-etre, Arthur (Romain Duris) and a dromedary
tra veiling through the streets of Paris. 117
ROBERT STAM AND ELLA SHOHAT
5.2 From Peut-etre, Ako's son Jean-Claud e (Olivier Gourmet)
feeding his ostriches. 118
Contributors 301
Index 307 6.1 From Neg Maron, Josua running through the Guadeloupan
countryside. 141
6.2 From Neg Maron, Josua and Silex examining a drawing
of a slave ship owned by a beke. 147
7.1 From Jindabyne, A shot from Susan's ghostly and
estranging perspective. 161
x Figures
7.2 a From Jindabyne, Shot/reverse-shot editing creates
Introduction
and b a structure of reciprocal exchange. 163
8.1 From My Winnipeg, Sleepwalkers on the train hurtling
New Perspectives on
out of the city. "Guy Maddin," played by Darcy Fehr,
sleeps in front of the train window, outside of which Postcolonial Film
scenes of Winnipeg past and present are being screened.
Photo credit: Jody Shapiro/Everyday Pictures. 179
By Rebecca Weaver-Hightower 1
8.2 From My Winnipeg, The famous reenactment: actors
playing Maddin's siblings, with mother (Ann Savage)
presiding. The lump in the foreground is Maddin's father,
rolled underneath the living room carpet. Photo credit:
Jody Shapiro/Everyday Pictures. 183
This book, Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance, begins with
9.1 From The Edge of Heaven, Ayten and Susanne in
analysis of The Battle of Algiers (1966) and ends with study of The
the kitchen. 205
Lost Water (2010). Although these films are set in different parts of the
9.2 From The Edge of Heaven, Nejat on the shore. 214
world, the former North Africa and the latter India, they share much: both
10.1 From Cape No. 7, Message from the ending of
realistic, both documentary in feel, both made with a political purpose
the film-rethinking/resisting "restoration." 233
(one publicizing a recent revolution and the other hoping to foment one).
10.2 From Cape No. 7, A band of multicultural talents. 236 Their similarities are significant, but their differences are more so. A his
11.1 From District 9, The prawns and gritty, hyper-real setting torical fiction drama, The Battle of Algiers was made bz: a "first-world"
of District 9. 249 filmmaker about a "third-world" anti-colomal struggle with ~hich he
11.2 From District 9, Christopher, as Wikus surprises him s-ymp~, ~wl i1 e '/iJe'L ost Water, a low-b.u..... dget I._ documen....t.. a-ry video, was
in his home. 260 ma de y a largely self-taught "fourth-world" filmmaker about a postco
lonial State's internal struggle involving the filmmaker 's own historically
12.1 From The Lost Water, Salt harvesting with hand tools
marginaliz ed social class. In The. Lo$t Water, the subaltern filmmaker has
continues to be a backbreaking endeavor. 274
begun to speak.
12.2 From The Lost Water, The feet of Agariya cultivators in
These films' differences testify to the social changes during the fifty-year
the salt pan squeezing crystals from saline mud. 275
span between their productions . While many midcentury films, like Kim
(1950), illustrated colonialism, later-twentieth-century postcolonial films,
like The Battle of Algiers, documented and even spurred resistance. Twenty
first-century films, like the German/Turkish The Edge of Heaven (2007),
continue to explore the challenges of transitioning from an old colonial
order to a new order (as one character calls the European Union). Film of
the latter half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries documented,
perhaps inspired, the fantasies and historical realities of the imperial project,
from zenith to decline.
Postcolonial studies-the scholarly approach represented in this book
similarly changed during this period. Mid-twentieth-century analyses, like
Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism (1950), Albert Memmi's The Col
onizer and the Colonized (1957), and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the
Earth (1961), largely described colonial oppression. In the later twentieth
century, postcolonial studies developed into a recognized discipline, building
on landmark publications like Edward Said's Orienta/ism ( 1978), Gayatri
Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak" (1985), and Homi Bhabha's Location
of Culture (1994) to focus on history, resistance, power, and the transition
2 Rebecca Weaver-Hightower Introduction 3
from colonization to nationhood. 2 The field has continued to evolve in the order (represented by Third Cinema, Oppositional Cinema, National Liber
twenty-first century, now finding itself embroiled in another conversation, a arionist Cinema, and Cinema of Revolt), global films of recent decades have
newer postcolonial space. Posrcolonial studies continues to integrate study engaged with different issues than those "classic" postcolonial film genres,
of history, empire, and resistance, of course, but debates now trend toward including religious and tribal factions emerging from posrcolonial power
contemporary texts about spaces previously not included in the postcolonial vacuums, terrorism, new diasporas, and neo-imperialism. Posrcolonial film
universe. scholarship has followed these films into analyses of a complicated new
The coalescing evolutions of postcolonial studies and film are at the cen world order. The essays in this volume are as concerned with history as ear
ter of this book's collective argument. Postcolonial Film examines a half lier posrcolonial film analyses, bur they focus on more recent histories and
century of films in order to better understand their contribution to and on the lingering (instead of immediate) effects of colonialism. Neg Maron
commentary on changing posrcolonial circumstance s and ideas. This chang (2005), for instance, a film that chronicles two Afro-Caribbean young men
ing postcolonialiry is reflected in this book's analyses, even in the reconsid surviving a dearth of opportunity in a postcolonial island nation, includes
eration of films often read as traditionally postcolonial. Both The Battle a scene of the youths reacting with violence to a picture of a slave ship. The
of Algiers and The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1977), for film thus alludes to historical colonialism bur in a contemporary context
instance, chronicle a posrcolonial event, the 1954-1962 Algerian War of as part of struggle, with the destitution remaining in the wake of colonial
Independence. The Battle of Algiers, in fact, reputedly influenced later resis exploitation.
tance movements from the Black Panthers to the IRA, bringing what would The informal survey of the field this collection represents also indicates
soon be recognized as posrcolonial ideas to a wide audience. But Nicholas a shift in location, away from what once would have been seen as the core
Harrison's reading of The Battle of Algiers in this book focuses not on the posrcolonial regions of Africa, India, Latin America, and the Caribbean,
film as a depiction of historic posrcolonial struggle but on how the film con in ways that reconfigure our understanding of posrcolonial space and its
tinues to be read and used in this contemporary, Islamophobic age. Like the changing geographical face. Taiwan and China are now accepted spaces for
rest of the essays in this volume, analyses of The Battle of Algiers and The discussions of the posrcolonial, and the collapse of the Soviet Union has
Nuba rake their postcolonial discussion into less charted territory, illustrat introduced other posrcolonial spaces, as well. This changing geographical
ing a contemporary turn in postcolonial film scholarship that includes nor face brings with it a new conceptual vocabulary for postcolonial studies.
only examination of contemporary responses to old texts but also more For instance, Taiwan's struggle with its own colonial history in internal
recent texts from spates and voices (indigenous and female) previously over space, the subject of two essays in this volume, raises a topic that scholars
looked by posrcolonial studies. interested in "Taiwanese film" as a category within World Cinema might
miss, and highlights an issue overlooked in other approaches to the rich
tradition of Taiwanese cinema. These expansions in posrcolonial space
have widened the range of who is doing the postcolonial resisting, largely
A SHIFT IN POSTCOLONJAL FILM STUDIES away from the third world to the fourth world of indigenous/aboriginal/
marginal/subaltern peoples who continue to be the victims of newly post
This development in postcolonial film scholarship is well represented here. colonial but still rapacious social orders. It is striking how global this
The book was assembled from responses to a worldwide call for papers, fourth world now is, with locations all over North and South America,
and the essays chosen for the collection typify the kind of analytical stances India, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. But in these spaces, resistance
evident in the totality of submissions received. From this corpus of work, is more complicated than before. "Postcolonial" is now properly applied
Postcolonial Film includes a dozen essays that give a snapshot of film schol at least in terms of contemporary filmmaking-to this area of marginality
arship today. So, instead of giving a representative sampling of postcolonial that can seem to provide a sense of genuine authenticity, outside the capi
spaces or covering the dozen most recognizable posrcolonial films, this book talist tentacles of global distribution.
presents for analysis a cross section of cutting-edge posrcolonial research on Current scholarship's reading of recent cinema from new spaces and
international cinema, research focused on more recent chronologies, new voices makes sense when one considers recent decades' global increase in
spaces, and emerging technologies. film production, as digital technologies make production and distribution
As the contributions illustrate, much contemporary postcolonial cinema less expensive and easier, breaking down barriers between art and more
scholarship has shifted its focus toward more recent films from the lat casual expression. One need only look to the changes between the two
ter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, films examining current situ documentary-styled films bracketing this volume to see how twenty-first
ations. No longer as interested in a time of resistance to the old colonial century self-produced DVDs can now replica re the standards of professional
4 Rebecca Weaver-Hightower introduction 5
films of the twentieth century. And for those with the technology, videos space, such contextualization of postcolonial predecessors and legacies aids
uploaded to You Tube and other Internet sites (like the dozens of short films understanding of the films.
of the Global Dialogues film project available through You Tube), can make While the individual essays contextualize specific political spaces, the
films available internationally within minutes of completion, without the collection when viewed as a whole draws connections between spaces,
barriers of official distribution networks. 3 The Internet and new technolo films, histories, themes, and perspectives. Individual essays discuss not only
gies of distribution have increased filmmaking by independent and ind_ig the Caribbean, Taiwan, and North Africa, but also South Africa, Australia,
enous artists and activists and made viewership of independent films outside Canada, Europe (East and West), and India. The juxtaposition of these
of one's home country now more possible than ever, also enabling scholars essays, all discussing a particular film and its postcolonial heritage, cre
across the globe to quickly access films they wouldn't even have known ates a range of parallels and interconnections, highlighted in this Intro
about two decades ago, impacting film studies in ways similar to film pro duction and in the book's Afterword. Some of these thematic connections
duction. New technologies have also, of course, left their mark on filmmak are suggested by the titles we have used to group the essays according to
ing technique and form. One need only compare the film effects possible chronology and theme: New Readings of Twentieth-Century Anti-colonial
at the turn of the twenty-first century-with the spectacular CGI effects, Resistance Narratives, Millennial Tropes of Neo-empire, and New Imagi
costuming, and grotesque makeup of District 9 as exemplar-to see how nations of Neo-postcolonialism.
technology has changed what film can tell and represent. These technolo Postcolonial film, as this book defines the phrase, differs from two
gies of production and distribution, both resulting from and contributing to other oft-used and similar descriptors, "world cinema" and "transnational
shifts in the times and spaces recent films portray, have catalyzed to (even cinema. "5 The number of recent books with "world cinema" in their title
demanded) recent shifts in postcolonial film studies. indicates the importance of this phrase within contemporary international
film studies.6 Although a useful comparative phrase, "world cinema" can
be problematic because it can include any film foreign to the country in
OUR CONTRIBUTION which one is oriented, in practice often any non-Anglophone or non-Anglo
American film; first-world European films on any subject could fit into the
Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance, in its work in area studies, world cinema category as well.7 A related term that has also shown up in
its furthering of cross-cultural comparison, and its continuing interrogation recent film studies is "transnational," which is also useful for indicating a
of "the postcolonial," makes an important addition to film studies writ broad comparison, one that is, as Newman and Durovicova's World Cin
large. Postcolonial Film joins a lively conversation that has been occurring ema, Transnational Perspectives explains, "above the level of the national
among postcolonialists and film specialists for many years, one that rec but below the global" (2007, 10). Although Postcolonial Film also works at
ognizes the importance of political space in film studies. Postcolonial film this level, this book uses the term "postcolonial" instead because it analyzes
scholarship has long examined films within a geographical/political context, the complicated sociopo litical realities and histories involved in the creation
because such a context helps to illuminate how films respond to earlier films and dissolution of the borders that transnational studies often ignore.
from a particular nation or region and also how governmental forces of The postcolonial, this collection argues, remains an important and useful
censorship and nation-building continue to impact film industries, along analytic category. The "postcolonial" in Postcolonial Film indicates that
with ethnic and religious conflicts and literary anp dramatic traditions. Such this book's primary purpose is to contribute to the ongoing analysis of post
prior studies include Rachel Dwyer and Divia Patel's Cinema India: The colonial situations, theories, and texts, specifically film for how it relates to
Visual Culture of Hindi Film (2002) and Jigna Desai's Beyond Bollywood: and grows out of colonization and postcolonization. 8 Although the concept
The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film (2004 ), both analyzing has evolved in recent decades, this book's use of "postcolonial" indicates
Indian film. Similarly, studies like Roy Armes's Postcolonial Images: Stud that it is ultimate( more inte s · he olitica proJ.sc,l.gf a fi m thaLl.,
ies in North African Film (2005) and Kenneth W. Harrow's Postcolonial tlie spaces 1t re-p:r.e.s.-e-nts. The Lost Water proviaes an interesting example
h
African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (2007) ana O tnis new e nition and of the continuing importance of the postcolonial
lyze film within larger political spaces, tracing geographical, cultural, and as a concept, for whereas world cinema might ignore this film because of its
historic traditions of a large swath of films. Postcolonial Film joins these marginality and would focus (not undeservedly) on Bollywood, postcolo
conversations by having its contributors contextualize readings of a specific nial film would be interested in The Lost Water because of its emphasis on
film within a national or political-geographic cinematic tradition, exploring struggle and redefinitions of history.
how the film grew out of or responded to that space's film history.4 Because The essays to come are linked structurally more than thematically or
an important aim of postcolonial studies is the interrogation of history and geographically . Each is structured to focus on a reading of a single film as
6 Rebecca Weaver-Hightower Introduction 7
an exemplar of a postcolonial space and history, each discusses the adjective hf w those languages are translated in subtitles, are crucial to the responses
"postcolonial" as it applies to that space, and each includes analysis of film English-speaking audiences to the film, as Harrison's examples tellingly
stills to aid viewers who might not be able to access the film under discus \ow. And more broadly, as can now be demonstrated via a film so widely
sion. We hope that Postcolonial Film will open up an ongoing conversation :iewed and interpreted for more than fifty years, how a film is viewed greatly
about film to scholars more traditionally focused on literature and other depends on the context, culture, and expectations of its audiences. .
non-cinematic texts.9 Next in the collection comes another piece on Algena that also provides
a chronicle of anti-colonial resistance, Sarah Mosher's "The Sound of Bro
ken Memory: Assia Djebar's The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua
TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANTI-COLONIAL (1977)." Mosher explores film's a?ility to .transcribe colonial conflict and
RESISTANCE NARRATIVES postcolonial culture through a readmg of this compellmg counterp~rt to The
Battle of Algiers. Pontecorvo's film had been made m the 1mmed1ate after
Our starting point is the 1960s with Nicholas Harrison's "Yesterday's math of the war of independence, its triumphs still bright, its wounds still
Mujahiddin: Gilio Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966)." Partly because raw. The film-although remarkably even-handed-has its heroes and its
of Fanon's involvement and his writing about it, the Algerian struggle for martyrs. The subject of Sarah Mosher's essay, Djebar's The Nuba, is a more
independence has assumed an iconic role in the development of postcolo reflective, more melancholic work, although it still throbs with remembered
nial studies. Within the tradition of cinematic explorations of anti-colonial violence, not only from the war of independence but also from the original
struggle, too, Algeria looms large, thanks mostly to The Battle of Algiers, French conquest in the middle of the nineteenth century.
which has continued to resonate against the background of multiple subse The issues Harrison raises about language are pertinent here, too. As
quent conflicts right up to the present day, as Harrison's essay shows. Mosher notes, the Berber tongue spoken in the mountains from where
The focus of the essay is on the role of Islam in the film, not a subject Djebar hails and where the film is set was not at the time an official language
much discussed in early readings of The Battle of Algiers, but one which of independent Algeria, any more than is the French language in which Dje
has exercised critics more recently, thanks to the new global prominence bar, like many of her contemporaries, was educated and in which she writes
of what is often referred to as "Islamism." How important was Islam for her novels. Perhaps even more important, however, is the question of who is
the original Algerian struggle? Did the film accurately represent this level of allowed to speak, in whatever language. In postcolonial Algeria, indigenous
importance? Were Islamic elements within the film overlooked by its origi women have not, on the whole, had access to public speech; as a result,
nal audiences? Should the film now be praised or censored for its ideological their experiences in the war of independence-touched upon in a couple
"ambiguities," if indeed it contains such things? of powerful scenes in The Battle of Algiers-have largely been absent from
These fraught and knotty matters are soberly addressed by Harrison. official histories of the struggle. The Nuba operates within that absence, not
Contextual analysis is needed to understand just what role Islam did actu by simply providing a presence but rather by suggesting, through whisper
ally play in the Algerian struggle, so Harrison draws on historical studies and fragment and music, something of the larger picture .
as well as interviews with several of the leading protagonists, including one While The Battle of Algiers uses a largely realist form to tell its story,
undertaken in 2007 by the author himself with Saadi Yacef, the FLN (Front The Nuba eschews the linear narrative of mainstream cinema, finding in the
de Liberation Nationale) militant who produced the film. The essay also nuba of its title an ancestral form that resonates with an experimental film
provides close reading of several key scenes in order to give proper weight tradition based on the suggestiveness of juxtapositions, on the careful use
to the complexity of the film's visual landscape and composition as well as of sound, on the implications of the words unspoken. Although a fictional
to assess the accuracy of its representation of historical events. The essay's film, The Nuba uses a pseudo-documentary form in which the protagonist,
,references to other critical readings of the film provide useful material, par a well-educated French-speaking professional woman-not unlike the film's
ticularly the rather puzzled reactions of a 2004 Cahiers du Cinema panel on director-returns to her home village ( in the mountains where the direc
re-viewing a film whose Islamic elements they had previously overlooked, but tor grew up) to conduct interviews (as the director had done) with women
that now strike them, rather belatedly, as almost propagandistic. On that who had witnessed, and in some cases fought in, the war of independence.
basis, they tend to condemn the film for its "ambiguity," a term Harrison Memories of oppression and of struggle do not, it turns out, fade over the
inspects closely and is inclined to treat with more respect. years. Paradoxically, they get stronger, more insistent, and emanate from
Two final issues emerge, both of which are relevant for most, if not all, other voices, new voices.
of the other films under discussion here. Language is key to understanding The third essay in the collection examines ·a film contemporaneous with
nuance. The particular implications of the use of French or Arabic, and The Nuba but created in a very different part of the world. Also like Mosher 's