05.12.24, 20:30, Burn! (Queimada) (1969)

Throughout the 1960s, Gillo Pontecorvo lit the fuse with films like Kapò (1960) and Battle of Algiers (1966). Reinventing political cinema as a formally rousing yet nuanced spectacle, he was both celebrated and hated for his ability to make the decolonisation struggle blockbuster-worthy. Burn! (originally Quimada) perhaps counts as the apotheosis of Pontecorvo's left-wing populist project.

Loosely based on the life of freebooter William Walker and his role in the Nicaraguan coup d'état of 1855, Pontecorvo uses this historical context to demonstrate the violent machinations of global capitalism. In doing so, he slyly draws parallels with the state terrorism the US was guilty of throughout the 1960s.

Marlon Brando, who for this let slip the lead role in Butch Cassedy and The Sundance Kid (1969), plays the inconic mercenary in his struggle to kidnap the island of Queimada from the Portuguese coloniser. What begins as a Lawrence of Arabia-like epic and reiteration of the white saviour myth, however, quickly turns morally muddy. Indeed, years later, Walker is asked to destroy the resistance movement he himself founded so that a transnational sugar company can loot the island. Lauded by Edward Said and others, the battle cry of Burn! continues to resound, demanding recognition for all of Earth's outcasts.