Days of Glory

 

Amanda with director Rachid Bouchareb

Hollywood has announced its Academy Awards and among the nominees for best foreign film was acclaimed French director Rachid Bouchareb’s Days of Glory.

Bouchareb and his co-writer Olivier Lorelle join The Fabulous Picture Show to discuss their acclaimed war-time drama, which pays homage to the North African soldiers who fought for their French ‘fatherland’ during World War II.
 
Beginning in a small Algerian village, a group of novice recruits soon learn of the injustice and racism they face as ‘second-class soldiers’, when they see their French counterparts promoted and given preferential treatment.
 
The film sparked widespread debate about the unequal treatment of French and North African war veterans. Jacques Chirac, the French president, and his wife Bernadette were reportedly so moved by Bouchareb’s story, that the government changed its policy this year, increasing the pensions of North African veterans to bring them in line with those of French soldiers.

After waiting almost 30 years for the honour, Hollywood director Martin Scorsese finally won the Best Director Oscar for his gangster film, The Departed. The director, who famously lost five nominations, also won Best Picture. His awards didn’t surprise many pundits, neither did Dame Helen Mirren’s win of Best Actress Oscar for The Queen and Forest Whitaker’s win of Best Actor Oscar for The Last King Of Scotland.

 

Scorsese finally wins his Oscar [AFP]

The other winners include: Best Supporting Actress was Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls; Best Supporting Actor is Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine; Best Foreign Language Film went to Das Leben der Anderen (aka The Lives of Others); Best Animated Feature Film Happy Feet; Best Adapted Screenplay The Departed; Best Original Screenplay Little Miss Sunshine; Best Original Score Babel; Best Original Song I Need to Wake Up – An Inconvenient Truth performed by Melissa Etheridge; Best Documentary Feature An Inconvenient Truth; Best Documentary Short subject The Blood of Yingzhou District; Best Visual Effects Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest; Best Cinematography Pan’s Labyrinth; Best Art Direction Pan’s Labyrinth; Best Animated Short Film The Danish Poet; Best Action Short Film West Bank Story; Best Costume Design Marie Antoinette; Best Make-up Pan’s Labyrinth; Best Sound Mixing Dreamgirls; Sound Editing Letters from Iwo Jima; Best Film Editing The Departed; Honorary Award Ennio Morricone.

Composer Ennio Morricone

Also being honoured at this year’s Oscars with a Lifetime Achievement award is the legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone, whose 45 year career has seen him compose some of the world’s best loved and recognisable soundtracks, including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Untouchables, Once Upon a Time in America and Cinema Paradiso. Amanda travels to Morricone’s birth city of Rome to meet the 78 year old maestro.
 

Nollywood actress Christiana

Away from Hollywood is Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry capital which is now the third biggest in the world, producing as many as 2000 films a year.

In Nollywood, small people – that’s people with restricted growth – are big business.

We meet Christiana, an actor whose disproportionate features used to see her regularly cast as witch doctors in voodoo themed films. But today there are fewer roles for Christiana than ever before, because there are more people of small stature vying for roles.

 

Amanda Palmer’s biography

 

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