Alliance Française Focus on French Cinema French Cinematheque @ The Avon

One Tuesday each month, the Alliance Française of Greenwich Focus on French Cinema in conjunction with The Avon Theatre host the French Cinémathèque Series at The Avon Theatre, Stamford.
Cost: Members: $7, Non-members: $12, Students: $9
Film starts at 7:30 PM, with a pre-film wine and cheese reception at 7:00pm.
This month’s film is: THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966) New 50th Anniversary Digital Restoration
DIRECTED BY: Gillo Pontecorvo
The action begins at dawn on October 7, 1957. Under torture, an Algerian nationalist reveals to Colonel Mathieu the hiding place of the last surviving guerrilla leader, Ali La Pointe. Mathieu’s paratroops surround the house in the Casbah, ready to blow it up unless Ali surrenders. From the pensive faces of the four freedom fighters within, we flash back to November 1, 1954, when a message from the National Liberation Front had launched The Battle of Algiers. After this prologue, we follow the three-year history of the Battle. Terrorism escalates on both sides. A harmless Arab worker is accused of killing a policeman and in retaliation the French place a bomb near his home in the Casbah, killing many innocent people. In return, three Arab women disguised as Europeans penetrate the heavily guarded French sector, wreaking havoc with bombs in two cafes and at the Air France office. But the elite French paratroopers, with their vastly superior resources and training and the ruthless use of torture, systematically destroy the Algerian guerrilla movement, cell by cell. When they finally arrest the intellectual Ben M’Hidi and the key leader El-hadi Jaffar, only Ali La Pointe remains. We return to October 7, 1957. Ali La Pointe dies and the Battle of Algiers ends, a victory for the French. But three years later the revolutionary phoenix rises again in the Casbah, leading to Algeria’s independence in 1962.
LANGUAGE: French and Arabic with English subtitles
RATING: NR   RUNNING TIME: 123 minutes