CINEMA OF REVOLT: 5 MOVIES
For many African filmmakers, cinema always represented a weapon. A weapon for change and social awareness. They saw it as an essential and necessary medium to challenge the status quo. A status quo that started to be shaped at the dawn of the 60s. In fact, many Africans thought the 60s were a new exciting time, free of colonial ties and oppression, making way for a new horizon full of hope (Independence).
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However, this gain of national independence was not the perfect freedom that many expected. Indeed, this period came with a lot of problems. New harsh realities such as political corruption, class division, dictatorship, poverty, and neo-colonialism came into play. Plus, other countries like Angola and Guinea-Bissau were still fighting for their freedom.
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Cinema was more than just mere escapism for Africans and the filmmakers themselves. Filmmakers were sensible to the hard realities of their nations and extended their activism through their art. Their work reflected the everyday fight and struggles Africans had to go through. Whether it was political oppression, ongoing colonial abuse, economic inequality, gender inequality, ethnic division, etc.
By depicting those political, economic, and social flaws in their work. African filmmakers were inviting their fellow Africans to wake up and fight for a better society that no longer exploits them. They wanted their art to bore a mirror effect, that reflects back to Africans their realities. An art that demands change now!
1. SAMBIZANGA
"The early days of resistance in Angola in the 1960s. Domingos Xavier, an activist in the MPLA, the Angolan party fighting for national liberation, is wrenched from the arms of his wife by a troop of soldiers who take him to an unknown destination. His wife sets off on an exhausting march across the whole country in search of her husband."
the first feature film shot in Africa by a woman of African descent - Watch here
2. MORTU NEGA
"The story of a woman who searches through the country for her husband, a resistant, while the war for independence is raging. She finds him at last and saves his life. When peace finally arrives, they have to learn how to be together again and start living in a destroyed land."
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3. CAMP OF THIAROYE
"The film is about the mutiny by and mass killing of French West African troops by French forces on the night of November 30 to December 1, 1944. West African conscripts were protesting poor conditions and revocation of pay at the Thiaroye camp. The film is a criticism and indictment of the French colonial system."
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4. LUMUMBA
"Made in the tradition of such true-life political thrillers as Malcolm X and JFK, Raoul Peck’s award-winning Lumumba is a gripping epic that dramatizes for the first time the rise and fall of legendary African leader Patrice Lumumba.
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When the Congo declared its independence from Belgium in 1960, the 36-year-old, self-educated Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the newly independent state. Called "the politico of the bush" by journalists of the day, he became a lightning rod of Cold War politics as his vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies in Belgium and the U.S. Lumumba would last just months in office before being brutally assassinated."
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5. THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
"One of the most influential political films in history, The Battle of Algiers, by Gillo Pontecorvo, vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s."
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