Dawn of the Damned
•
1hr
25mins
Directed by
Ahmed Rachedi,
Starring
Mazouz Ould-Abderrahmane,
Sid Ahmed Agoumi,
Salah Teskouk,
Samia Meziane
...
This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.