Original subtitles

(distant drumming)

(jaunty, old-fashioned music)

(speaking Spanish in the distance)

(applause)

(faint helicopter blades get louder)

(drumming and helicopter blades)

(drumming)

(drumming)

(drumming)

(laughter)

(drumming)

(classical music)

(classical music)

(drumming)

(drumming and typewriter)

(applause and crowd cheering)

(crowd singing)

(car horn beeping, crowd noises)

(drumming, car horn, crowd)

(drumming, birds singing)

(drumming)

(footsteps echoing)

(door unlocked, creaks open)

(bell ringing in the distance)

(drumming and singing)

(seagulls in the distance)

(crowd chatter in the distance)

(knocking sound)

(music)

(drumming)

(drumming, children playing)

(drumming and typewriter)

(drumming)

(car horn beeping)

(drumming)

(drumming)

(birdsong)

(music, echoing voices and drumming)

(drumming)

(clanging in the distance)

(music)

(drumming)

(drumming and children playing)

(drumming)

(ticking bomb)

(Spanish song)

(explosion and screaming)

(explosion and screaming)

(ominous music, crowd chatter)

(drumming and engine noise)

(drums)

(crickets chirping)

(shouting and drums)

(drums)

(exciting music)

(drum music)

(drums)

(soft street noise)

(bell chimes in distance)

(screaming)

(clapping and crowd noise)

(explosion and shouting)

(crowd noise)

(drums and distant applause)

(chanting and clapping)

(chanting)

(Street noise)

This isn't something that just happened.

I didn't just happen to be here

in Algeria and I'm not here just

because of my own personal efforts.

I'm here because of the revolutionaries in

America who made it possible for me to be here.

And I'm saying that this is not the

only thing that we plan to do.

I cannot even begin to think about going into exile.

To quit the fight.

I can only...

become even more serious than I was

when I was in the United States.

Plan very carefully to make my way back to the United States,

so that we can strike at the monster

in it's own lair. To strike

at the heart of the misery that we've been travelling through.

(music and street noise)

The Algerian people know how we

felt about this struggle and gave

Eldridge political asylum and allowed

the Panthers to set up an embassy

their international headquarters and any

panthers that came there, had asylum.

When we went to see 'The Battle of Algiers', we saw people that

we recognised in terms of... and field negros, field slaves.

So when you saw what was going on in the Kasbah,

culturally, in terms of what people were cheering on,

the words may have been different but the

language was universal in terms of opression.

So you meet Ali La Pointe who when you first meet him

is hustling to survive, he's playing three card monte.

A game that is played all throughout New York City.

Right away he gets locked up, he goes to prison.

And in prison he gets politicised.

This is the story of Malcolm X, this is the story

of so many people in the Black Panther party.

A lot of stuff that we saw in the film to us was a

foreshadowing of what they would do to the black community.

So when the police and the government responded

by turning the Kasbah or those Arab sections

putting up barbed wire and checkpoints and

effectively turning them into concentration camps.

We talked about that happening in the black community,

we thought that day would come when

there was barbed wire, there would be

checkpoints. We wanted to make sure that...

when that day came people were organised and that there was

a resistance that was not Panter led, that was people led.

(drum music)

I had been in the panters for about 6 months.

Early in the morning my door was kicked in, to my grandmother's

house, and I was arrested. I had just turned 16.

And I...

was charged with conspiracy and weapons possession in a

case that became known as the New York panther 21 case.

There were two undercover cops, who had infiltrated the

panther party, who were gonna be the key witnesses.

And one of the physical pieces of evidence along with

some guns that were seized from

panther offices and panther homes,

was the film 'The Battle of Algiers' that they

said the panthers used as a training film

to carry out their

our tactics or our mission or our plans for

guerrilla warfare and disrupting life in NYC.

(singing)

Demonstrations happen at the courthouse almost every

day. Fundraisers happen all over New York City.

Because people were saying

if panthers can't get a fair trial, none of us can.

And it attracted more support for the

black panther party, for the panther 21.

A lot more people became interested.

And I think people wanted to read the books that we read and

see the films so people wanted to see 'The Battle of Algiers'

just to see what the controversy was about.

In fact even before the arrest of the panter 21

the film promoters in New York City had a

poster that I remember seeing on the subway

of a guy with a beret, a black guy

and the darkest biggest sunglasses

you ever wanted to see and it was a

poster for 'The Battle of Algiers'

and the caption it was in the newspaper too and it says

'the black panthers have seen this film, have you?'

So even the film promoters and the exhibitors took advantage

of the fact that the panthers liked and embraced this film

to get people out to see the film.

(drums)

There were a lot of radicals known to me in the audience.

Mentally taking notes 'Ah, this is how you

do it, this is what a real revolution

is. And, this is how you organize it,

and this is how the enemy is like'.

There was a sense in this circle

that there was a looming revolution

or apocalypse…something sharp

a revolut that would come to climax in some

sort of revolutionary spasm, some sort of violent spasm, that

whether you liked it or not, this

was the relentless direction of

history; so it behooved you to stare

at it, to take it seriously…to

learn its rhythms, to learn its motives, to learn its sound and

its feeling. There was a style of

revolutionary bravado and I would

say delusion, that was at work

where analogies came very easily.

There was a little naiveté I think that we had, as to the

fact that revolution means different things to different

people, in terms of what they’re fighting for and the

fact that it was very much connected in Algeria to

suppression of who they were as Muslims, right? The

Islamic phase of the revolution to us, third-world people

fighting, of course we all believed in the same things. And

of course, there was going to be a socialistic society

where people could be whoever they want. So, people could

just be atheists, people could be Christians, they

could be Muslim, they could be whatever they want. But

there would be this wonderful kind of thing where there

had been a redistribution of the wealth, where everyone

could be free, where, uh, no matter the color of your

skin, no matter your gender, no matter your sex

orientation, it was cool, there would be a place for you.

Once one accepts that this is the story we are in,

then it has already alligned, it has organised your

mind around a tale of revolutionary aspirations which,

whatever its merits in Algeria, was

seriously, gravely irrelevent and

destructive in the United States.

We were not in a revolutionary situation,

there was no revolutionary populous.

What there were were fantasies and so

those who were interested in the American

revolutionary fantasy like the black

panthers, gravitated to this film.

And for that project, you know the Battle of Algiers,

the film, had become a model, an inspiration, an

illumination, a kind of totem of the magic of

revolution. I say it was delusional, because there was

nothing like that in play in the United States. Trying

to find and trying to achieve racial justice in

America is a very different project from

expelling an occupying force from an occupied territory.

It was taken as a kind of anthem to sing along with.

(explosions and shouting)

All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end.

Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours.

Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict.

Commenced at a time of our choosing.

In 2003 I was sent to the Al-Anbar

province, Iraq to fight insurgents

for the first time. And I thought

it was really, really hard.

So the challenge of confronting an insurgency

became the most pressing problem in my life.

And it was at that point that I came to know

the film The Battle of Algiers and began

to understand the war I’d fought differently,

as a result of seeing that film.

The Pentagon...

was focused on killing enemies,

not on protecting the Iraqi population.

It did not understand that the tactics and techniques

it was using were enflaming the insurgency,

were pouring gasoline on embers and creating the

very enemy that it was dedicated to defeating.

There were insurgents inside the Pentagon trying

to get the Pentagon to understand that what

it was doing was counterproductive, that it

needed to fight a very different kind of war.

And everyone in the Pentagon was

talking about The Battle of Algiers,

the film, and was talking about how

badly the war in Iraq was going.

(soft music)

I looked at the film almost as a documentary

and I saw it very much as a training film.

As a film that I wished I had seen sooner, to train

in particular the soldiers I was sending to Iraq.

But exactly the right tool to use to educate

graduate students in counter-insurgency.

So I did not think about camera

angles and actors and portrayals,

I viewed it directly as an insight

into insurgency plotting and

planning and in some ways I got a better understanding

of the insurgencies I'd fought against in

Iraq and Afghanistan from seeing at least the film's

depiction of how insurgents made things happen.

The film does a nice job of showing

how difficult and how important intelligence is.

In irregular warfare, in counter-insurgency, the

hard part is figuring out which of the literally

millions of human beings, all dressed the same,

all look the same, which one is your enemy.

And...

getting that idea into the head of the

military, the military that's focused on

killing very difficult targets to kill...

that know what they should focus on is figuring out who

your enemy actually is. That's unbelievably difficult.

Anything that can help in making that

mental shift is well worth the effort.

One of the lessons of

counter-insurgency campaigns for me is

unlike conventional combat where this side owns this territory

or this side does.

There are ways to balance political objectives and

you can give each side more than half a loaf.

You can do that only if you understand and think deeply

about the motivations of both sides and this is one of the

benefits of the film that it does a nice job of portraying

what it is that both side is trying to accomplish.

It does not portray obviously, success

in splitting that loaf in two.

(mumbling) It's a fair point,

it doesn’t do as good of a job of

explaining what happened inside France

and why the war was ultimately lost,

I believe in Paris. Not in Algiers.

(call to prayer)

(kids shouting)