National liberation movements swept through the Global South from the 1950s to the 1970s ushering revolutionary governments into power. In Algeria, the National Liberation Front (FLN) ousted the French in 1962 as chronicled in Gillo Pontecorvo’s epic film The Battle of Algiers.
With the struggle in Palestine in mind, we will screen The Battle of Algiers tomorrow (Tuesday) at Starr Bar in Bushwick, Brooklyn. No film about revolutionary warfare before or since has managed to capture the suspense, the danger and the primordial struggle between oppressed and oppressor.
Following the film, we will host a panel discussion with Elaine Mokhtefi and Vijay Prashad about anti-colonial movements then and now.
Elaine Mokhtefi served in Algeria’s new government for its first dozen years and collaborated with revolutionaries from around the world, including the Black Panthers, who sought refuge in Algeria. She is the author of Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers.
Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. He is Executive Director of The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
The Indypendent’s Associate Editor Amba Guerguerian will be the moderator. We put together this conversation hoping it could be fruitful in a time when the genocidal nature of colonialism is on full display in Palestine and people are coming together to defeat it.
Doors open at 5 p.m.; film at 6 p.m. (arrive early for an introduction by Mokhtefi, who has a cameo); discussion at 8 p.m.
To purchase tickets, click here.
