Afrique 50 (1950)

Directed by

René Vautier

Genre

documentary film

Country

France

Runtime

17 min

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 28 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A French filmmaker travels to West Africa to document French League of Schooling activities but instead records what he sees as colonial abuses by the French army. The movie shows a lack of teachers and doctors and the mistreatment of local people. The director was jailed for making it and the film was banned for over 40 years.

confrontationalangryrawsoberingindignantunflinchingdidacticunsettling

What happens

Afrique 50 [a.fʁik sɛ̃.kɑ̃t] is a 1950 French documentary film directed by René Vautier. The first French anti-colonialist film, the film derived from an assignment in which the director was to cover educational activities by the French League of Schooling in West Africa (in modern Mali and Ivory Coast). Vautier later filmed what he saw, a "lack of teachers and doctors, the crimes committed by the French Army in the name of France, the instrumentalization of the colonized peoples". For his role in the film Vautier was imprisoned over several months. The film was not permitted to be shown for more than 40 years. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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