Battle of Algiers' Director Pontecorvo Dead at 86
Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, whose 1966 film The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) was banned in France for years despite winning the top award at the Venice Film Festival and being nominated for three Oscars, has died in Rome at age 86. In an obituary, Reuters observed that the film, which depicted brutality against civilians by both sides in Algeria's war for independence from France in the 1950s, was shown to Pentagon officers and civilian experts after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The invitation to the screening, the wire service recounted, read, "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas."
