Chronicle of the Years of Embers 1975
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina / Algeria 1975 / 2h57m
Synopsis
The winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival – the first and only African film to have received the award – Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s stirring, rarely seen epic is an essential big-screen experience.
Algeria’s late colonial history is filtered through the eyes of an impoverished farmer who, in the late 1930s, is forced to leave his drought-stricken land. As the years pass, he is caught in the thick of the Second World War, a typhoid outbreak and, eventually, the beginnings of the struggle for independence.
Chronicle of the Years of Embersis a work on an astonishingly ambitious scale, making use of vast landscapes and a multitude of extras – a high-water mark in Algerian, and African, cinema.
“Probably the only film that dwarfs the spectacle of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia…a film of matchless visual energy and formidable talent that demands to be seen once more in the world’s cinemas, as intended.” – Bright Lights Film Journal
Distributor:
Cineteca di Bologna
Archivio Film
Via dell'Industria, 2
40138 Bologna
Italia
Tel: +39 051 6018607
carmen.accaputo@cineteca.bologna.it
www.cinetecadibologna.it
Screenings:
Watch Africa Film Festival | Pontio Arts Centre, Bangor Wales | 26 Oct 2017
Melbourne International Film Festival | Melbourne, Australia | 4 aug 2018