Block Cinema: ¡QUEIMADA! (BURN!, 1969)

40 Arts Circle Drive,Evanston IL 60208

13 October, 2022

Description

Thursday, October 13 - 7PM ¡QUEIMADA! (BURN!) (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969, 132 min, 35mm) Italian with English Subtitles Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 landmark docudrama BATTLE OF ALGIERS gave the world a front-line report on the ongoing struggle for independence in Northern Africa. Although it takes place more than a century earlier, his follow-up, ¡QUEIMADA!, is in some ways the more prescient film, predicting the insidious neo-colonialist strategies that would ensnare emerging nations in the decades to come. A historical fiction about insurrection-for-profit, ¡QUEIMADA! narrates the myth of William Walker (Marlon Brando), who helps engineer a slave revolt on a fictional Caribbean island in order to install a puppet government for the British sugar trade. As in ALGIERS, Pontecorvo demonstrates his gifts for dramatic, stylistic, and ideological tension, combining big-budget spectacle with neorealist immediacy, and pitting iconic leading man Brando opposite non-professional actor Evaristo Márquez, who gives an unforgettable performance as the revolutionary José Dolores. Presented in its full-length original version in 35mm, with a brief introduction by Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History at Northwestern. Co-presented with support from the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern.