Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah
Week 2 kicked off with Ridley Scott's visionary futuristic film-noir based on Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". A visually stunning piece, Blade Runner also asks philosophical questions on the meaning of life, and represents one of Scott's finest works as a film-making auteur.
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Cast: Saadi Yacef, Jean Martin, Brahim Haggiag
Country: Italy / Language: French and Arabic / Running time: 1h 56mins
Week 2 concluded with a memorable and seminal war film, with documentary-like approach to telling the rise of revolutionary insurgency in occupied Algeria. The intelligence of the film is displayed in its balanced account of both sides of the story. It makes no attempt to judge, condone or condemn but simply to show, and the result is a powerful, compelling and sadly still all-too relevant masterpiece.
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ReplyDeleteBlade Runner: Visually stunning depiction of a future metropolis and a hard-boiled noir type story transported in that setting with Harrison Ford as the private eye works so well, mixed with philosophical themes to be expected from a PKD adaptation but that were still ahead of their time before the word "clone" became commonplace.
ReplyDeleteBattle of Algiers: Simply the greatest anti-colonialist film ever made.