(Un)familiar Fictions: The 17th October 1961 Massacre And Jacques Panijel’s Octobre À Paris (1962)

Abstract

The 17th October 1961 police massacre of hundreds of protesting Algerians in the centre of Paris has become one of the most recognized events of the French-Algerian war. There are several online interactive documentaries about the event as well as a plethora of fiction films, bandes dessinées, television documentaries, and literary works. Jacques Panijel’s documentary, Octobre à Paris, has received comparatively little attention, due to the fact that it was immediately censored upon its release in 1962, and was not screened in cinemas in France until October 2011. In Naissance du cinéma algérien (1971), Algerian author and film critic Rachid Boudjedra criticizes Octobre à Paris for being insufficiently political, suggesting that the aesthetic practices adopted distract the viewer from the accounts of Algerian witnesses. In contrast to Boudjedra, this article argues that the film’s deployment of familiar cinematic tropes that are more readily associated with fiction film create a sense of spectator familiarity with the problematic subjects and themes presented, an understanding that was designed to lead to concrete social and political change.