QUEIMADA! [BURN!]

The Late Marlon Brando in a Film by the Director of BATTLE OF ALGIERS! As Ennio Morricone's score throbs and chants, black men ride white horses in seeming syncopation, a blonde-bearded Marlon Brando stands stern-faced before a burning cane field, and a secret agent and a rebel leader have a final confrontation in a prison cell. On a Caribbean island in the 1840s, Brando's ambiguously motivated British agent provocateur William Walker helps black slaves free themselves from their colonial overlords. But ten years later, after the leader he found for them has led a second revolt against their new landlords, Brando returns-to suppress it. Director Pontecorvo's follow-up to his legendary BATTLE OF ALGIERS was cut by 20 minutes and "dumped" on its US release. But even in its mutilated state, "An amazing film, intensely controversial even in its failures; a luxuriant, ecstatic epic."-critic Pauline Kael. Thanks to John Kirk of MGM/UA, the original version has been fully restored-including the late Brando dubbed into Italian!

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo; written by Franco Solinas and Giorgio Arlorio; produced by Alberto Grimaldi. Italy, 1969, color, 132 min. Italian with English subtitles.

QUEIMADA will open to the general public later this fall at AFI Silver.