Dawn of the Damned

Jul 5, 1965

1h 25m

★ 7.4

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.

Genres

Documentary

History

Drama

Production Companies

Centre National du Cinéma Algérien (CNCA)

Dawn of the Damned Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Mouloud Mammeri

Mohamed Chouikh

René Vautier

Ahmed Rachedi

Mazouz Ould-Abderrahmane

Sid Ahmed Agoumi

Salah Teskouk

Samia Meziane

Mahdia Magroufel

Hamou Saadaoui

Daniel Boukman

Emilie Busquant, a woman with an exceptional destiny, was born on March 3, 1901, in Neuves-Maisons, Lorraine. In 1923, she moved to Paris to find work and met Messali Hadj, who had also come seeking employment. A beautiful love story began; she fell in love with both a man and a cause: the independence of Algeria. Together, in 1926, they founded the first Algerian independence party, the North African Star (Étoile Nord-Africaine). She would support the Algerian people's struggle throughout her life.

7.5

Algérie du possible

Dec 7, 2016

By meeting his former comrades in combat, the film follows the journey of Yves Mathieu, anti-colonialist in Black Africa then lawyer for the FLN. When Algeria became independent, he drafted the Decrees of March on vacant property and self-management, promulgated in 1963 by Ahmed Ben Bella. Yves Mathieu's life is punctuated by his commitments in an Algeria that was then called "The Lighthouse of the Third World". The director, who is his daughter, returns to the conditions of his death in 1966.

10.0

Les Enfants de l’ovale... Un essai qui transforme !

May 24, 2012

No overview available.

7.4

The African Queen

Jan 7, 1952

At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.

No Image

0.0

Saving Africa's Witch Children

May 26, 2008

This shocking documentary reveals the plight of young Nigerians branded as witches.

7.6

When We Were Kings

Oct 25, 1996

It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.

6.8

The Ghost and the Darkness

Oct 11, 1996

Sir Robert Beaumont is behind schedule on a railroad in Africa. Enlisting noted engineer John Henry Patterson to right the ship, Beaumont expects results. Everything seems great until the crew discovers the mutilated corpse of the project's foreman, seemingly killed by a lion. After several more attacks, Patterson calls in famed hunter Charles Remington, who has finally met his match in the bloodthirsty lions.

5.3

The Imperial Lullaby

Mar 21, 2020

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

6.4

White Hunter, Black Heart

May 16, 1990

Renowned filmmaker John Wilson travels to Africa to direct a new movie, but constantly leaves to hunt elephants and other game, to the dismay of his cast and crew. He eventually becomes obsessed with hunting down and killing one specific elephant.

6.3

Khartoum

Jun 9, 1966

English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.

8.3

The Forgotten Hill

May 19, 1996

At the outbreak of the Second World War, two friends, Mokrane and Menach, abruptly interrupt their studies and return to their remote native Kabylian village of Tagsa. While waiting to be drafted into the French Army they have time to woo. Mokrane falls for beautiful Aazi and soon marries her only to find out that she can bear no child. Menach, on his part, is stongly attracted to Davda, but the latter is already married to a rich merchant...Happiness does not seem to be in store for the two former students...

9.0

Machaho

Jan 1, 1995

In Kabylie, rude mountain region in the north of Algeria. Arezki finds the young Larbi exhausted, buried under the snow. He takes him in and nurses him until he's recovered. The host seduces Arezki's daughter. She is pregnant. This is an unsupportable shame to the father of the female sinner. Arezki claims vengeance. He leaves his house and takes the oath not to come back before having killed Larbi who betrayed him under his own roof.

10.0

Baya's Mountain

Dec 3, 1997

Set in the 1800s among the Berbers of North Africa, this 1997 Algerian feature concerns a noble widow who receives a customary purse of gold coins from the enemy tribe that murdered her husband; the gift puts her in conflict with her kinsmen, who want the money to buy back land taken by the enemy in cahoots with French colonials.

10.0

Mimezrane

Jan 1, 2008

A legend that begins with the magic words: "Once upon a time." Once upon a time, there was a little girl nicknamed Mimezrane for her beauty and especially for her beautiful braids. She was beautiful but had strangely sad eyes. She was orphaned at a very young age. Her boyfriend and confidant was Hennouche, a mischievous little boy with big black eyes. They lived together a carefree childhood. Time passed. They grew up. Hennouche became a goat herder with a melodious voice; Mimezrane, for her part, became a washerwoman and, on occasion, a water carrier. Both accepted their fate without ever complaining. Yet, even in her poverty, Mimezrane was the most beautiful of all.

10.0

Da L'Mulud

Jan 1, 1987

An emblematic figure in the defense of Berber culture, Mouloud Mammeri (1917-1989) experienced numerous confrontations with the authorities in Algeria, including the suspension in 1973 of the teaching of Berber at university and the ban of the conference he was to deliver on March 10, 1980 at the University of Tizi Ouzou on ancient Kabyle poetry... which will be the detonator of the powerful and harshly repressed cultural demands movement of April 1980, also called the Berber Spring. Mouloud Mammeri is one of the "historians" of French-speaking Algerian literature from the middle of the last century who, through his pen, gave back the soul to a country by giving it back its voice.

10.0

Mouloud Feraoun

Jan 1, 2009

Docufiction about Mouloud Feraoun, an author who upholds the great values of the Universal Man. It is in the name of man that Feraoun stands up against injustice. It is in the name of man that he is tormented by war. Feraoun is a solitary creator who suffers to the point of wishing for liberating madness. It is through his work that the portrait of a humble and discreet author, a talented writer and convictions emerges. Most of the time, I let him talk about himself in simple and fair words. I compile his moments of hope, worry, dreams and fears. During all my research, a generous and good Mouloud Feraoun stood out to me who did not hesitate to expose an inhuman and shameful colonial system. His clear and straightforward voice echoes the cry of a people from whom he has never separated.

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Dawn of the Damned

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Dawn of the Damned Trailers