Word: pontecorvo
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...films derives entirely from their participation in the class struggle. But here the Dziga-Vertov group sees a problem where conventional filmmakers see none, and that problem is in the very nature of political art. The method of conventional political films--Costa-Gavras' Z and The Confession, Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers -- is to assume that the way to political commitment is through faithful depiction of political reality. So they select an important event and recreate it on screen, aiming to provoke a specific chain of emotions and to construct a specific moral stance...
...both socially accurate and respectful of human dignity. So it's no wonder that American audiences have come to expect superficial cynicism as the acceptable tone of "progressive" American filmmaking efforts; leave Tolstoy to the comp lit classroom, leave the values of foreign filmmakers as diverse as Godard, Pontecorvo, or Costa-Gavras to their one-shot or arthouse audiences...
Kapo (Battle of Algiers), by Gillo Pontecorvo. Lowell dining hall. 7:30, 10, March...
...only film industry which seems to have overcome its skittishness over politics is the Italian. Bellochio, Petri, Pontecorvo, Bertolucci have all made films which transform tough social criticism, by passion and human perception, into art. Even Italian hacks, like Montaldo of Sacco and Vanzetti fame, are hacks on a higher plane. If American film is to mature, its maturity will come from those able to confront Kramer's value system and erase its sigma from socially-conscious flimmaking. As Robert Steel said (in New American Review...
...know," he confides, "I play Jesus Christ in Johnny Get Your Gun. I'd like to pursu?e that. Pontecorvo may do a film of The Passover Plot in which I would play Christ. We hope to break the barriers of religious tradition. Show Christ as a political genius. After all, politics emanates out of ourselves...