Dawn of the Damned (1965)
Overview
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.
Cast
Mouloud Mammeri
Narrator (voice)
Mohamed Chouikh
René Vautier
Ahmed Rachedi
Mazouz Ould-Abderrahmane
Sid Ahmed Agoumi
Salah Teskouk
Recommendations
The Soviet Story
Audrey
Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet
Life in a Day
Night and Fog
Visions of Light
Van Gogh: Painted with Words
Another Day of Life
The Image Book
Shoah
Capitalism: A Love Story
Einstein and the Bomb
All That Breathes
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
Wormwood
The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing
Four Daughters
Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron
Collapse
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound