Hello, my name is Justin McLuhan. I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club. And today, we're talking writer, director,

Gilo Ponticorvo. Anyone seriously interested in film, at least knows about the Battle of

Algiers. But I'll bet a lot of people don't

know the name of its director. Well, we just said it, Gilo Ponticorvo. And I think it's because

it's a film that is so totemic and it represents so much of like, oh, this is how you do kind of

like documentary style war film that it kind of dominates everything. And the fact that honestly,

he just did not make that many movies is also a mark against him. Well, I feel like the Battle of

Algiers has gone down almost like a historic document more than an oturist work, you know?

It just came into being all by itself.

The fact that it, you know, is famous for looking, you know, being consciously influenced

by newsreels of the time, the fact that it seemed to capture the reality of the Algerian

war with documentary-like accuracy.

It's easy to forget that there was a director behind that.

And he made one other

super production after that, 1969's Byrne, starring no less than Marlon Brando. And in the years

after that, very, very little. But those two movies are so strong that they should be enough to

secure his immortality. But even Burn is one of those

movies that a lot of people would say, ah, but the Italian version is stronger, but then you

don't get Marlon Brando's voice. So even then, like to watch the movie until maybe a few years

ago when people went in and did a hybrid edit of it would be a compromise of some kind.

So what got you interested in choosing this topic? Because I love the Battle of Algiers, of course,

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