African Cinema and Human Rights

Mette Hjort, Eva Jørholt, Mette Hjort, Eva Jørholt

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253039446
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Derechos humanos

Essays and case studies exploring how filmmaking can play a role in promoting social and economic justice. Bringing theory and practice together, African Cinema and Human Rights argues that moving images have a significant role to play in advancing the causes of justice and fairness. The contributors to this volume identify three key ways in which film can achieve these goals:

• Documenting human rights abuses and thereby supporting the claims of victims and goals of truth and reconciliation within larger communities
• Legitimating, and consequently solidifying, an expanded scope for human rights
• Promoting the realization of social and economic right

Including the voices of African scholars, scholar-filmmakers, African directors Jean-Marie Teno and Gaston Kaboré, and researchers whose work focuses on transnational cinema, this volume explores overall perspectives, and differences of perspective, pertaining to Africa, human rights, and human rights filmmaking alongside specific case studies of individual films and areas of human rights violations. With its interdisciplinary scope, attention to practitioners' self-understandings, broad perspectives, and particular case studies, African Cinema and Human Rights is a foundational text that offers questions, reflections, and evidence that help us to consider film's ideal role within the context of our ever-continuing struggle towards a more just global society.

PART I

PERSPECTIVES

1 Human Rights, Africa, and Film

A Cautionary Tale

Mark Gibney

ONE OF THE great concerns for a Western scholar writing about human rights films and Africa is that, with rare exception, the only films that reach Western audiences are those with a strong human rights theme—and, quite naturally I suppose, a Hollywood star (or two). I would include in this category Blood Diamond (2006, Edward Zwick, USA / Germany), starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly as opponents of the civil war–inducing gem industry, as well as The Constant Gardener (2005, Fernando Meirelles, UK / Germany / USA / China), in which Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz play star-crossed lovers caught up in the greed and corruption of multinational drug companies that use unsuspecting Africans as human guinea pigs. This category would also include Hotel Rwanda (2004, Terry George, UK / South Africa / Italy, with Don Cheadle, Nick Nolte, and Joaquin Phoenix), which presents an international, mainstream version of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Sometimes in April (2005, Raoul Peck, France / USA / Rwanda), the so-called “African” depiction of these same events, was in large part ignored by Western audiences although it was a far superior film. On the other hand, it had only one Hollywood star in the cast, and a fading one at that (Debra Winger).¹

The larger point is that there is seldom any counterweight to these films. Instead, what is shown—virtually all that is shown—are films that make the “Dark Continent” look that much darker and that much more hopeless as well. To be sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but the vast majority of films that reach a Western audience will be intent on highlighting some human rights tragedy.

Manohla Dargis (2007) of the New York Times has described a certain fatigue the viewer is sure to experience from all the harrowing images of Africa now being shown at the local Cineplex, and she asks why and for whom such films are made. Her answer is that they are made because they are “important,” and they make those who make these films, not to mention those who star in them, “important” people. She slyly writes: “Most American films about Africa mean well, at least those without Bruce Willis,² and even openly commercial studio fare like Blood Diamond wears its bleeding, thudding heart on its sleeve. But what, exactly, are we meant to do with all their images, I wonder?”

Dargis continues: “It is exhausting having your conscience pricked so regularly. It may also be counterproductive to the stated aims of the people who make these films. It’s an article of faith that social-issue movies are worthwhile, important, even brave, as people in Hollywood like to insist. But it is naïve to think that these films, including a fair share of the documentaries, are being made on behalf of Africa and its people; they are made for us.”

In her view, such films ultimately provide little more than an evening’s entertainment, although they might also help Western viewers think outside the box for a few short hours. Dargis describes these films as being little more than a “balm for our media-saturated fatigued hearts and minds” rather than serving to aid Africa or Africans. But even more damning, she believes that such films may actually work to shield us (meaning Western audiences) from the “chilling world that is outside.”

In a similar vein, although he was not writing about film as such, African scholar Makau Mutua (2001) condemns much of human rights scholarship because it is based on a simplistic (and racist) Savages-Victims-Saviors (SVS) metaphor. Savages are invariably dark-skinned people outside the bounds of civilization. The Victims are also dark-skinned but are invariably portrayed as passive and helpless. Finally, the Saviors are white Westerners waving the banner of the United Nations and the body of international human rights law.

The storyline of the thriller Tears of the Sun (2003, Antoine Fuqua, USA), for instance, involves Bruce Willis (nicknamed LT) as the head of a Special Forces unit and his battle-hardened crew: Slo, Zee, Red, Lake, Doc, and a few other soldiers with equally silly-sounding nicknames all intended to show the camaraderie of the unit. Their assignment is to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), who is working in an area of Nigeria about to be taken over by a group of rebels (Savages). There are plenty of (long) shots of villagers (Victims), usually with missing limbs or scars on their skulls. At first, the (Savior) crew rescues only Kendricks, but LT has a change of heart (what a surprise!) and decides to do the “right” thing and to evacuate the rest of the village. In the process, he and his force of about twelve men take on a guerrilla force that seems to measure in the thousands. Needless to say, LT and his men lead the refugees and the good doctor to safety. The film closes with wildly cheering Africans who all claim that they will never forget what LT and his brave men have done for them.

The more commercially successful Black Hawk Down (2001, Ridley Scott, USA / UK) is based on a real event during the 1992–93 humanitarian crisis in Somalia where upward of three hundred thousand people died of starvation. The story told in the film occurs over the course of less than a day. A small force of US troops has entered Somalia with the mission of capturing or killing the brutal Somali warlord Mohammed Farrar Aidid whose militia is seizing international food shipments and attacking Red Cross distribution centers. The man in charge of this operation is General Garrison (Sam Shepard), who makes General Custer seem like a military genius. After “intel” locates Aidid, the rough-and-tumble soldiers go into action, all the while maintaining the Savior stereotype they had been assigned from the outset of the film. But what is most interesting is the depiction of Africans. As in Tears of the Sun, you cannot imagine how many of them there are, particularly when compared to the rather puny force of American soldiers. With two minor exceptions, they remain nameless, and all seem to have gone for the do-rag look. They repeatedly walk right into barrages of bullets, suggesting that life means little to them. What is surprising is that the Victims are virtually nowhere to be found until a brief and rather bizarre scene near the end of the film: as the Saviors are able to escape from danger and run for safety, a small group of bystanders cheers them on—the first Africans in the film who are not shooting at them.

In this way, many Western films on Africa, including those that take up human rights issues, perpetuate some of the core paternalistic tropes that were forwarded by the imperial powers to justify the idea of the “White Man’s Burden.” Today the so-called “civilizing mission” has been replaced by a “rescuing mission,” and the white Savior has taken the place of colonial archetypes like the Great White Hunter or the equally great white doctor, missionary, or district commissioner. Yet somehow Dr. Livingstone’s conviction that it is “on the Anglo-American race that the hopes of the world for liberty and progress rest” (in Pieterse 1992, 65) still seems to sustain most of these essentially Eurocentric films. While some of them are probably not intended as anything but plain entertainment fare set in a continent “known” for its many dangers and conflicts, others appear to be guided by liberal good intentions. But, as Ella Shohat and Robert Stam point out, “Media liberalism . . . does not allow subaltern communities to play prominent self-determining roles, a refusal homologous to liberal distaste for non-mediated self-assertion in the political realm” (1994, 206).

Against this background, it is of course crucial that African filmmakers present their own visions of, dreams for, and critiques of Africa, and their own views on human rights. This is not to say that non-African filmmakers should be prohibited from addressing human rights issues in an African context. If it is indisputable that human rights violations should be disclosed wherever they occur, then Western filmmakers should use their much better funding opportunities and in general much easier access to producing films to do so. In addition, well-funded Western films stand a considerably better chance of reaching Western audiences, and, especially in those cases where the human rights abuses result from international policies, this is not unimportant.

The best way forward is not clear for such films. Although much of what Westerners view and read about human rights and Africa is simplistic, racist, and self-serving, ignoring atrocities is certainly not the answer either. Perhaps the key is to not moralize and to not portray matters in such black-and-white terms (literally). More balanced human rights–based films include Forest Whitaker’s stunning portrayal of the genocidal Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (2006, Kevin Macdonald, UK / Germany), or Idris Elba’s mesmerizing performance as a cruel warlord in Beasts of No Nation (2015, Cary Joji Fukunaga, USA). And evil is not restricted by color, as is perhaps best evidenced by Nicolas Cage’s maniacal portrayal of Yuri Orlov in Lord of War (2005, Andrew Niccol, USA / Germany / France). The reader might recall the opening of the film where Cage / Orlov casually informs the audience that one in twelve people on the planet owns a weapon—and that his goal is to sell arms to the other eleven, although he seems to concentrate most of his efforts where they are needed least: Africa.

What follows is an analysis of a number of films that address Africa from a human rights perspective, grouped according to general subject matter. Some of them are made by African filmmakers and some by Westerners, but as a general rule they are far less familiar to Western audiences than the SVS Hollywood matrix described above. I present this analysis with an acknowledgment that the focus of my scholarship is neither Western nor African cinema. I am a human rights scholar, and my main interest is in films that deal with human rights issues, either directly or indirectly. When teaching human rights, I now base my courses around film. For most Americans, including college students, abuses of human rights invoke a theoretical stance—we tend to view them as what I refer to as “distant horribles.” Film helps break through this protective veneer. The aim here is not to confront the viewer but to help make students aware that human rights work is, above all else, about protecting human beings. Thus, I look for films that are intelligent, provocative, balanced, and meaningful (Gibney 2014). Fortunately, there are a number of outstanding films on Africa that achieve these standards, and we now turn to these.

Colonialism

Given colonialism’s enormous importance in terms of the development of Africa (Ferguson 2011)—or the continent’s lack of development (Rodney 1974), depending on one’s point of view—it is surprising that there are not more films that deal directly with this issue. One explanation, of course, is that today’s “Saviors” would not respond well to their depiction as “Savages.”

Although there is a relative dearth of films on colonialism, there are some standouts. First among these is La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, 1966, Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy / Algeria). This faux documentary on the Algerian independence movement is notable for its depiction of colonialism from the perspective of the Algerians and not as a vehicle to show Europeans enjoying the colonial experience. One of the most unsettling aspects of watching this film now is that the audience is allied squarely behind those who would be considered “terrorists” under the present definition of the term. Perhaps it is not appropriate to speak for others on this matter, but I felt absolutely no qualms when the revolutionaries purposely targeted French civilians in the film. They were, after all, part of the cruel and oppressive colonial enterprise. In contrast, the scenes of torture of the Algerians leave an indelible mark on all those who watch this film. As disturbing as the still photos of Abu Ghraib are, they still do not fully capture the barbarous nature of these practices. The torture scenes from The Battle of Algiers do.

Indigènes (Days of Glory, 2006, Rachid Bouchareb, Algeria / France / Morocco / Belgium) is a feature film depicting France’s call to arms of its colonial soldiers after the country fell to the Germans in World War II. These volunteers faced systematic racism, or worse, as they were repeatedly sent out on the most dangerous missions and treated as whatever the French term for “cannon fodder” happens to be. There is a nice scene at the end of the film when the townspeople of a liberated village acknowledge the bravery of these men in ways that French military officials were simply not capable of. In the epilogue the viewer learns (and is by no means surprised) that the raw racism depicted in the ...