The Battle of Algiers

1957: Ali La Pointe is a small time crook who joins the Algerian freedom fighters the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) who are at war with the French colonial occupiers. The French retaliate with counter-terrorist operations and the torture and repression of the urban guerrillas, yet ultimately are defeated by the demonstrating masses. Nominated at the Oscars for Best Foreign Film, Best Director and Best original Screenplay.

Garrett Bradley

This film was selected by American artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley, subject of an exhibition in Eye. About her film selection she says:

There exists in this constellation of films, something that shaped me as I emerged in the world, a terrible and beautiful symmetry—a series of visions that reflect not only the abyss of human ignorance and the convulsions of violent power, but also the quiet, stubborn radiance of resistance.

These sacred dispatches from the edges of human consciousness are a bulwark against the erasure of memory. When art is silenced, the past is sterilized, the present flattened into obedience, and the future a barren repetition of sanctioned myths. A singular narrative emerges: one that dares not confront its own ugliness, nor does it have the courage to imagine beyond this.

These works are not mere entertainment (although some were commissioned as such); they are fever-dreams of our shared condition, how we stagger beneath the weight of history and yet still raise our heads to dream. I return to them again and again as a reminder that, though the world is often cruel, our collective capacity to endure, to fight, and to imagine something better is a defiance so profound it borders on the sublime.