Ernesto “Che” Guevara side by side with Ahmed Ben Bella at the Alger Airport
This new documentary about the accumulation of foreign revolutionary movements in Algiers between 1962 and 1974 will be broadcast on May 16th on the Franco-German channel Arte.
Directed by Mohamed Ben Slama, “Alger, la Mecque des révolutionnaires” reveals “a defining episode in international history, unknown to the general public”, in the words of the film’s producer Yannis Chebbi (Electron Libre Productions).
For the twelve years after its independence in 1962, Algeria welcomed colonial and revolutionary movements from all over the world: Palestine, Cuba, South Africa, the United States. Under the impetus of Presidents Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumediene, Algiers became an asylum for exiles and opponents of other countries’ regimes. This diplomatic particularity led Amilcar Cabral, the Guinean-Bissau statesman, to call Algiers “the Mecca of revolutionaries”.
Mohamed Ben Slama’s documentary traces the events of this decade with the help of archives found in many European countries, as well as in the United States and Cuba. It took a year to gather together the images and eye-witness accounts necessary to understand the years in which the Algerian capital became “Algiers the Red”.
Produced by Arte France with Electron Libre Productions, “Alger, la Mecque des révolutionnaires” (52 min) was broadcast May 16th on Arte. Click here to watch on replay the film. It will be available until May 24th on the website.
Sources: Arte, Mediapart
