Synopsis
It’s the post-war period. Europe has been rebuilt. Everything is going well in the “model colonies” where the French Republic leads its wards with a maternal hand towards the lights of reason and progress. However, not everyone shares this view. The first anti-colonial film in France, banned and recently awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this effective pamphlet against colonialism in Black Africa earned its author thirteen charges and a one-year prison sentence.
A word from Tënk
At 21, René Vautier is already familiar with clandestinity and censorship, consequences of his involvement in the Resistance and his participation in Louis Daquin's film La Grande Lutte des mineurs. When he goes to French West Africa to make a film for the League of Education, he confronts the gap between colonial discourse and the real living conditions of colonized populations. In just twenty minutes, the filmmaker relentlessly links the rise of capitalism and racist domination. He systematically dismantles the official discourse of supposedly emancipatory colonization to better highlight the logics determined by the economic interests of the colonizing states and grounded in violence. A striking film, Afrique 50 is also a fundamental historical document that in 1950 exposes facts that are still silenced today: the emergence of struggles for independence – who has ever heard of Mamba Bakayoko? – and their criminal repression.
Chloé Vurpillot
Programming Manager, Tënk France
