The SAS (Section Administrative Spécialisée) were created in 1956 by the French army during the Algerian war to pacify "the natives". During the day, the SAS were used as treatment centres and at night as torture centres, in order to crush the Algerian resistance. The SAS were inhabited by French soldiers and auxiliaries (harkis, goumiers) and their families. At independence in 1962, a few families of auxiliaries stayed on; the vacant buildings were occupied by families of martyrs awaiting the better days promised by the new Algeria. 46 years later, the SAS at Laperrine, in the Bouira region, still exists, a unique place inhabited by people who have taken refuge there. They have been joined by farmers fleeing the terrorism of the 90s. They all live as best they can in a place they did not choose, suffering the consequences of war.

Filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat, cross the Mediterranean, and embark on his first jour...

On November 1, 1954, the National Liberation Front of Algeria announced the war for the country's in...

Born to an Algerian father and a Sicilian mother in Tunisia, I have always been wealthy of three cul...

"Gerboise bleue", the first French atomic test carried out on February 13, 1960 in the Algerian Saha...

Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of g...

In 1967, Visconti came to Algiers for the filming of The Stranger with Mastroianni and Anna Karina. ...

1962, at the end of the Algerian War, Algerian independence activists are released from Rennes priso...

Cheikh Djemaï looks back on the genesis of Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature film, The Battle of Algiers (1...

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is...

Between 1954-1962, one hundred to three hundred young French people refused to participate in the Al...

In 1973, 6 guides from the National Ski and Mountaineering School (ENSA), including Charles Daubas a...

In February 1966, Pierre Mazeaud and Lucien Berardini attempted a difficult first ascent to one of t...

These are the first images shot in the ALN maquis, camera in hand, at the end of 1956 and in 1957. T...

"A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." It is in this film by Fawzi ...

In 1994, at over seventy years old, Gilberte and William Sportisse, threatened by the FIS, arrived f...

Pierre Clément, student and photographer of René Vauthier, first accompanied him to Tunisia to make ...

This docu-fiction recounts the difficulties overcome by an ALN detachment whose perilous mission i...

Albert Camus died at 46 years old on January 4, 1960, two years after his Nobel Prize in literature....

This 17-minute documentary is featured on the 3-Disc Criterion Collection DVD of The Battle of Algie...