Review … ‘Concerning Violence’

IT’S not often that a documentary is made up entirely of old archival footage but then again, ‘Concerning Violence’ isn’t just any documentary.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson and narrated by the inimitable voice of Lauryn Hill, the film brings to life Frantz Fanon’s book ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ – a highly acclaimed political book that criticises the colonial regime and psychoanalyses the effects of colonialism on both the coloniser and the colonised.

The film uses stunning imagery of contrasting African landscapes as the backdrop of some of the most uncertain and pivotal moments in modern African history, where our nations began to resist colonial structures that had oppressed and violated them for centuries one by one.

From an interview with an irritable white Rhodesian who explains to the interviewee that whites in Rhodesia are outnumbered 34 to 1 while castigating his black employee who is serving them drinks, to the standoff between mine workers in Nimba, Liberia and their Swedish employees over wages, the film manages to pair up the relationship dynamics and power struggles that took place to give way to a new independent Africa.

The idea of ‘white fear’ and ‘black violence’ and all the psychology that comes with it is continuously explored in the film.

Themes of philanthropy, white guilt and black suffering are also explored and illustrated by an interview with a European missionary couple who are on a mission to ‘help’ Africans, yet they can’t answer whether or not the condemnation of polygamy is a European or Biblical rule; to an interview with Thomas Sankara, the then-president of Burkina Faso, who believed that food aid was detrimental to his country as it created an unhealthy dependency.

It also brings to light the conversation about the African and European economic relationship, where then, like now, it appears that Europe benefits more from it than Africa does, and where aid should rather be seen as repatriation for the injustices incurred than a favour to the ‘starving black African’.

The film and Fanon’s work are both prophetic in their depictions of how Africa needs to find its own identity and not continue to build its nations and ideals based on those of the West, but also quite chilling when one realises that the way in which we see our development and growth is very much based on the Western template.

Regardless, ‘Concerning Violence’ is a difficult watch.

Not that the themes and ideas are physically difficult to understand but that it makes the viewer sit with difficult questions that can only be answered through a deeper understanding of how our history ties to our present.

All in all, a must see for all who want to know their history and truth, and even more vital for those who don’t.

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