Queimada, Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo Queimada is about the problems of the colonial revolution and is without doubt the most effective film to appear on this subject over the last decade. Using a Portuguese-dominated sugar island in the Antilles in the middle of the 19th Century as his backdrop, Pontecorvo brilhantly demonstrates the rise ot inter-imperialist contradictions (British v Portuguese imperialism) and how they interact both with the needs of a developing comprador bourgcoisie tied to sugar companies owned by British capital and theaspirationsof black plantation workers, heirs of numerous slave revolts in the recent past.
Pontecorvo's first film, The Battle of Algiers (reviewed in The Red Mole, Vol.2, no.7) was not distributed for general release in this country, presumably because the parallel with Ireland was both too immediate and too near for comfort. Queimada was initially released and shown over a year ago, but its impact was, unfortunately, not very great because the bourgeois press did not like it and also because the underground/cultural media gave it bad reviews in Ink, Time Our, Frendt, Oz, etc. The bourgeoisie dislike it for its message, the underground because they don't understand what the film is trying to say; and these two facts taken together reveal the enormous political importance of this film. Politically it s far more advanced than The Battle of Algers, though as in the latter, Pontecorvo portrays the enemy in a masterly fashion. It is not a crude agit prop division into "we are all clever and will win and they are all stupid and will lose". Like French imperialism in The Battle of Algiers, British imperialism in Queimada (represented in the person of Sir Wilbam Walker played by Marion Brando) is extremely clever, aware of contradictions which exist within the mass movement and its vanguard and completely capable of exploiting them with the aid with the national bourgeoisie lead to defeats, particularly if you surrender your weapons; (b) a revolution must destroy all the apparatus of the bourgeois state to be successful; and (c) the reality of the capitalist world market means that all the tasks of the social revolution cannot be successfully completed in one COLLI In that sehse, therefore, Pontecorvo's film is not only a film about a sugar-island in the Antilles, it is about Indonesia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Guatemala, the Sudan, Santa Domingo, etc. While Jose Dolores is hanged in the end and his guerrillas defeated, there is a way of transforming this defeat into a victory if and only if the lessons of the defeat are recognised. The faces at the end of the film tell us that they have understood and that the next time the result will be different.
The manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie and their ability to exploit the weaknesses of their opponents makes this film remarkably universal. In the different phases of the class struggle in this country, for instance, we see the bosses engaging in similar kinds of tactical manoeuvresthe recent docks crisis being only one exampleand there is a certain parallel in the way in which the trade-union bureaucracy here and the national bourgoeisie in Queimada use imperialism's tactical manoeuvres to deflect the mass movement.
To conclude: Queimada is a revolutionary film which must not only be seen by militants, but used as a background for providing political education. It should be shown by university Soc Socs, by Red Circles, by ISC branches, it should be taken by Black Panther and other black comrades to the black ghettoes and it should be shown in occupied factories. This is how films of this sort can and should be used.
Clarissa Howard The film Queimada can be hired in 16mm for E9 per evening from the Film Bookings Dept United Artists, 37 Mortimer St., London W.l /Tel:01-636 1655).
Marion Brando ar Sir William Walker and Evaristo Marquez as Jose Dolores in Queimada.
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