ABSTRACT
The Battle of Algiers is a film about a pre-revolutionary moment, or perhaps a pro-revolutionary moment. Filmmaking flourished in some Latin American countries or in the case of Chile, by filmmakers who escaped the clutches of Augusto Pinochet’s government and worked in exile. Brazilian filmmakers, before and during the rule of the generals, founded a movement called Cinema Novo. Drawing on the principles of Italian neorealism, these filmmakers concentrated on the poor and dispossessed, especially in Brazil’s impoverished northeast; some drew on folk myths and incorporated music and dance within a melodramatic framework. Like the Italian filmmakers after WWII whose neorealist style was a big influence on Cuban filmmakers, as it was the world over, they would start anew, start by dissecting cinematic conventions themselves. Lucia celebrates revolution by examining Cuba’s tortured past and emphasizing a better future. It avoids the grand statements of Eisenstein’s film by concentrating on the matter of gender.
