ABSTRACT
M any Americans first encounter Algiers by viewing the 1965 Ital-ian film The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, who cast localpeople as actors in the city’s markets, cafes, and the famed Qasbah. Shotin black and white on location with a hand-held camera to lend documentary authenticity and released only three years after Algeria won its independence from France, The Battle of Algiers narrated the 1957 struggle that erupted within the capital of French Algeria between the National Liberation Front (FLN) and colonial troops as France’s global empire collapsed. When I was attending university, The Battle of Algiers was already becoming a cult film, and it whetted my appetite to know more about the city, Algeria, and North Africa in general. While I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia during the 1970s, I had the opportunity to travel around Algeria and subsequently made the country’s history the focus of my dissertation and scholarly research.
