Battle of Algiers is brilliant. If you want to feel like you’re part of the revolution against colonialism, this is the closest you can get. Shot on location in Algiers and using non-actors, it’s one of the first and best examples of cinéma vérité – a film that feels like a real documentary. So dive in and experience both sides of this war – the French colonizers and the Algerian freedom fighters. You’ll come out a more enlightened revolutionary.
Can you imagine a world 20 years after the fall of Hitler and the Nazis in which a former Nazi ended up in love with an Arab immigrant? Well you don’t have to, you just have to watch this film. You’ll experience racism, prejudice, and loneliness. The experience will hopefully be enough to help you feel the loneliness of life as an immigrant and to drop any prejudices you may have. The film is currently available to watch on YouTube (click on link).
Why Watch Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
It will provoke a lot a debate! So much to talk about!
It is one of acclaimed German director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s masterpieces (it won awards at the prestigious Cannes film festival)
Experience racism and prejudice in Western Europe in the 1970s
See some excellent camerawork – partly discusses below
The Breakdown
Emmi, an old white German woman walks into a bar to get out of the pouring rain. The camera cuts 180 degrees to show a group of Arabs watching Emmi from the other end of the bar. Then the camera cuts back 180 degrees to show Emmi sit down at a seat closest to the door. The camera marks the distance between Emmi and the Arabs drinking at the other end of the bar. Will the distance between Emmi and the Arabs be broken?
One of the barmaids challenges Ali, one of the Arabs, to go and dance with the old woman. Not one to refuse a challenge, Ali crosses the race threshold and walks to the other end of the bar where Emmi is sitting. He asks her to dance, and she accepts! They both cross the threshold and walk past the other Arabs to a dance floor at the back of the bar. All of the bar’s clientele watch them in silence.
Through Emmi and Ali’s relationship we get to experience the horrible amount of racism and prejudice they face from shopkeepers, Emmi’s family, and the people she works and lives with. What stuck with me was the image of Emmi’s son-in-law (played by Fassbinder) sitting on the couch reading a newspaper. He is dressed shabbily, is skipping work, and threatens to hit his wife if she doesn’t go get him a beer. Whilst he is acting like a pig, he complains about all the Arab immigrants and refers to them as pigs. The best metaphor of hypocrisy.
Conlcusion and What to Watch Next
The camerawork and unlikely relationship make this film great. It will challenge your own prejudices. Amazingly there are still a load of remnants from the time of Hitler – Emmi even admits she was a Nazi just like everyone else living in Germany whilst he was in power. For an excellent film on race in Europe go watch this film!
For more films about immigration and the migrant experience check out:
Black Girl: Sembene’s classic about a Senegalese girl taken to France to work for a French family. It’s essential viewing and available on YouTube.
Sin Nombre (Amazon): A Central American thriller following one boy trying to flee the country to escape the notorious Mara gang
In the late 2000s a group of black boys aged 12-14 robbed other children’s phones on around 70 occasions in Gothenberg. This film tracks one of their robbery scams to see how they did it whilst cleverly making the victims (and the audience) look (and feel) helpless. Watch it here (Amazon).
Why Watch Play?
It’s controversial but clever
It will make you feel uneasy and helpless
If you’ve seen Force Majeure (Amazon) or Cannes winner The Square and want to see more from director Ruben Ostlund
To experience mall culture in Sweden
The Breakdown
Play starts with a still shot of the centre of a shopping mall. Two 10 year old white boys enter the middle of the frame talking about what they need to buy next. Then, the camera slowly pans to the left, settling on a group of 5 black kids. They’ve spotted the two white kids and play rock, paper, scissors to decide who is going to go rob them.
Turns out, their trick is a lot longer than you might expect. One of the black boys asks one of the white boys for the time. Then when the white kid pulls out his phone, the black kid tells him that his phone looks just like the one that was robbed from his little brother. Cue a tour around town to find his ‘little brother’ to verify if the phone is the one that was robbed from him.
The race and class separation between the two groups is obvious. One group, with two white kids and one Asian kid, is obviously more well off than the group of black kids that rob them. They are in the mall shopping for new clothes and video games. In contrast, the black kids are just messing around. They’re not there to spend money, they’re there because they have nothing else to do. Robbing the richer kids is their entertainment. It gives them something to do and gets them enough funds to afford dinner.
For more on the identity dynamics, I recommend reading IndieWire’s review of Play here.
How the Director uses static images to convey helplessness
First of all, the bystanders in this film are pretty useless. Every time they see the group of kids in trouble, they refuse to help and just carry on with their own lives instead. The static frames make the bystanders look even more useless. Instead of cutting between close-up shots of the victims and antagonists, the static frame shows us their surroundings. You can see bystanders sitting or standing at the edge of the screen, pretending to be oblivious to the action. Their cowardice makes us question ourselves: would we be like them and just ignore kids being bullied near us?
The static frames also convey the victims helplessness. Once the victims enter the frame they’re stuck. They can leave the screen, but they will always return to it. Similarly, the audience is forced to watch the victims being bullied and robbed. There are short breaks from the main narrative, such as a group of Native Americans singing in the street, but our focus will always be diverted back to the kids being bullied. It’s as if the director wants us to feel helpless whilst trying to show us enough bullying to encourage us to help the helpless.
Conclusion and What to Watch Next
Play is brilliantly daring. It’s controversial and clever – it highlights cowardice and staunch social boundaries (class and race) and provokes debate. However, one word of advice, just like a lot of other controversial art (gangsta rap) you’ve got to look deeper than the surface.
For a funnier but even more awkward film from Ruben Ostlund, I strongly recommend Academy Award Nominee, Force Majeure (Amazon).
I’d also strongly recommend watching both Girlhood and La Haine. They’re two more films that focus on underprivileged kids looking for their way in life in societies where they’re marginalised.
Or, if you’re looking for more Swedish film, you must check out anything by Ingmar Bergman. Start with Wild Stawberries or The Seventh Seal (Amazon).
Do you want to see one of Africa’s best films from the 20th Century? Set aside 55 minutes to watch Black Girl below (please comment if the video is not working). Don’t let film scholars be the only ones to have seen this incredible film as this should be seen by everyone.
Why Watch Black Girl?
It’s short: it will only take 55 minutes of your time!
It features a strong female character
The best pieces of art are completed quickly. Black Girl was made in 20 days
Examine the legacy of colonialism
The Breakdown
Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl starts with a big passenger ship arriving at a port in France. A finely dressed black woman, Diouana, leaves the boat wondering if anyone will be there to pick her up. Sure enough a white man greets her, takes her bags, and drives her off. After a few jump cuts in the car ride (a style made famous in Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard) she arrives at a house on the French Riviera.
The opening suggests Diouana is here to meet her friends. Because of her nice dress and the white driver meeting her, it initially appears that she shares equal status with the white French people. However, as soon as she enters the apartment, it becomes clear that she does not share the same freedoms as her employers. She is kept in the apartment all day, every day to clean and cook and never ventures out because she never gets paid and is never introduced to anyone (which is always helpful when you don’t speak the language). As a result, she is almost a slave.
What’s the significance of the African mask?
To get to know the film a little better, look out for the African mask. It first appears in the film when Diouana buys it from a small boy from her neighbourhood in Senegal. She then gifts it to her employer who first question it’s authenticity (‘it looks like the real thing’) and then hang it on one of their blank white walls in their apartment in France.
Firstly, the mask initially signifies equality between Diouana and her employer. The act of gifting implies that you share an equal standing with the person you give to. Initially, because of the gifting, Diouana is equal to her employer. However, when her employers dismiss the mask as a fake, they imply that Diouana cannot afford a real mask and therefore she is not on the same level as them.
Secondly, the mask is a metaphor for Diouana’s isolation in France. Like the mask hanging in the middle of a blank wall, she is alone and out of place in French society.
Lastly, the mask is a symbol of the misappropriation of African culture. In Africa the mask is alive as the young boy is shot playing with it and wearing it. However, in France, the mask is dead. In France, the mask has been reduced to an ‘exotic’ artifact which sits on a wall as a trophy of Diouana’s employer’s exoticism. It allows her employers to temporarily ‘play’ their ‘connection’ to African ‘exoticism’ without experiencing any of the discrimination they perpetrate. Just like a fancy dress that they can take off whenever they want.
Narration as a symbol of post-colonialism
When watching Black Girl you’ll notice that whilst Diouana doesn’t speak French, all her thoughts are narrated in French. Her consciousness has been taken over by a language that isn’t her own. She can’t physically speak French and therefore become equal to the French speakers in France, but she can think in French. In fact, French is the only language she actually thinks in via the narration.
This is symbolic of the legacy of French colonialism in Africa (in this case, Senegal). Although Senegal achieved it’s independence from France a few years before this film was made, by restricting Diouana’s consciousness to French Sembene emphasises the parasitic legacy of colonialism. The colonisers colonised Senegal and replaced it’s native culture with it’s own and disrupted Senegalese consciousness in the process.
Conclusion
There’s so much more to say! Simply put, Sembene’s Black Girl packs a lot into just under an hour. If it’s not being studied at schools across the world, it should be. Everyone needs to watch this film!
If you haven’t seen it, you’re in luck. Watch it here on YouTube!
The Insult demonstrates just how powerful words can be. The trials between the Tony the Lebanese Christian and Yasser the Palestinian refugee are like the OJ Simpson trials on steroids.
Can you imagine a world 20 years after the fall of Hitler and the Nazis in which a former Nazi ended up in love with an Arab immigrant? Well you don’t have to, you just have to watch this film. You’ll experience racism, prejudice, and loneliness. The experience will hopefully be enough to help you feel the loneliness of life as an immigrant and to drop any prejudices you may have. The film is currently available to watch on 
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