The Battle of Algiers

Gillo Pontecorvo uses realism to portray the events of the Battle of Algiers in a newsreel type fashion. The documentary style filming used here shows things in what we think is in inside look at the struggle against the French colonists, although we are still watching a scripted film. By using realism in such a graphic film it is hard to detach yourself from it.

The Algerian point of view is conveyed pretty clearly throughout the film. The scenes show a lot of very ordinary looking people as well as important leaders and we get a panoramic view of the Algerian population and citizens. By showing us the massive amounts of people protesting in tandem with scenes of regular Algerian city living, we feel a connection to the even nameless characters with the notion that they are the “everyman.”

Fanon’s discussion of what self determination means to the oppressed is illustrated in this film. The Algerians begin to have revolutionary cells within the Casbah and a war for independence breaks out. Fanon uses the idea of De Facto versus De jure styles of power. The whole idea that countries are set up in a European Governmental system gives the Colonial rulers De Facto power even when they are no longer the dominating leaders by law. By using violence and pure revolution as forms of self determination, the colonized are refusing to sit at the debate table and argue something that has been pre-structured. Although the Algerians “lost” this battle in terms of what happened to the FLN in this course of war, the French were ultimately pushed out of Algeria. Thus proving what Fanon says about Self determination as a whole.

Film As Text?

MacDougall addresses the notion that Ethnographic Film does not hold it's place in the scientific world as well as Ethnographic text does for some researchers. Text is distinguished from film by a definition of the terms as well as the reception they receive. The concepts seem to be centralized around the ideas of interpretation variants through visual and written anthropological mediums. It is argued that perception is skewed in film because the viewer can be distracted by other events going on in the scene. Rather than focusing on precisely what the film maker may want you to observe, you are left to shift your focus to background noise and other interactions within the frame. Text does not allow for this distraction because "...concrete details are held in suspension in the crucial moment to permit abstract expression..." Written word allows the writer to convey a single idea in full detail allowing the mind to focus solely on the text at hand, rather than the scenery or character interactions in the background.

Both film and text have equivalent amounts of leeway in interpretation. That fact was evident in our class discussion following a quiz about our last reading. Each person in the class read the same passage, yet we all extracted different themes and ideas and weighed the importance of individual points from a view through our own window.

The concept of Film-as-Text causes a paradigm shift in the way anthropology is viewed. Film focuses less on the theoretical stance that is offered in text, and more on the gathering of raw data which conveys an entirely different retrospective view for an audience. It is important to then disassemble detachment from a film if it is to be seen as text, and then read it as such. If film is used as a source of information in which anthropological data can be obtained, seeing it as a form of text with observational accuracy and realism is crucial to its survival.