Not my Africa: Blood Diamond.
My bus voyage is interrupted for one night as we are sleeping the night at Kayes (former capital of Mali and reputedly the hottest town in West Africa...), near the border of Senegal. What a wonderful opportunity to put some old texts - Blogger sucks way too often with African internet connections - online! So here we go.
The last movie I saw in Ouagadougou's film festival was a big, Hollywood-starred movie Blood Diamond. Both main actors, Leonardo DiCaprio (who spoke French a bit too quickly for me in the dubbed version, so I didn't quite get all the jokes) and Djimon Hounsou (originally from Benin, but nowadays totally americanized),were nomineed for Oscar. The story is about a South African (or Rhodesian, as the main character puts it) diamond smuggler, Danny Archer (Leo), who is doing business in Sierra Leone during the civil war in 1999. The war is basicly financed by the diamonds, which are found plentiful in the country. The plot includes obligatory moral lessons, a love story and bad-guy-converting-into-good parts. All in all, it is a very gripping and entertaining film which I enjoyed watching, even as a French version (but I just couldn't continue for the next film, The Last King of Scotland - Idi Amin speaking French would've been a bit too much for me...)
However, I felt somewhat disturbed, watching the film which on the surface could be any ordinary action movie, but which is based on real people's experiences and suffering. I couldn't help thinking while watching those images of killing, rebels capturing child soldiers and several people chasing the oh-so-wanted diamonds, that all this fits well with the general stereotypies of Africa: war, greed, irrationality, brutality- with some wonderful scenery on the background. The beautiful, but dangerous continent. I am not saying that this Africa doesn't exist - it does, unfortunately - but it is not the Africa I have seen during my trip. I might be a bit naive, but rare have been those moments of fear during my time in West Africa. Of course war zones are something totally different, but for most people the whole of Africa seems to be a potentially lethal place. Besides traffic accidents, pick-pocketing and malaria, the biggest risks I have confronted have been: falling into open sewer ditches at night (especially in Ghana), being beaten up by ghosts (see the post The Night of the Living Dead) or drowning in the sea or the river.
But then we get to the final problem: what kind of images of Africa do we (as non-Africans) want to see? The Beninese director-actor Sylvestre Amoussou (see film Africa Paradis below, in Finnish) told in an interview about his difficulties while trying to find distributors for his film in French cinemas. People were like: "What is this? This story is not credible. Why don't you go and find some nice little true story from your village or something...". It is also a fact that most African artsy films are actually made for European audience, with the support of TV5, Arte, EU etc. Very often films about Africa fall into these two categories: either it is a movie made by Africans, telling a story from a village or some reality-based struggle in peoples' lives. Or it is a Hollywood film, telling about white people in African surroundings, often including a conflict or otherwise a true story (eg. Constant Gardener, The White Masai, Out of Africa etc.). Oh, I don't even know myself what kind of Africa I would like to see on screen, but it would be nice to have some variety. Why aren't there more films about immigration, one of the biggest problems in today's world? Parisian suburbian slums don't make a beautiful setting or what?
To get back to the film itself: Unfortunately, having even the best actors and superb special effects with huge explosions and breath-taking action doesn't mean that the film would turn out to be exceptionally good. In my opinion, Blood Diamond had a bit too much blood (not a surprise maybe, regarding the name of the movie) and bodies in it. Another true-story based film, Hotel Rwanda succeeded much better with much fewer shock effects. Or the Burkinabé short film "Humanitaire!", which I described earlier in Finnish and which luckily received quite a few awards in FESPACO.
So, even if the moviemakers may have had good intentions, to me the film mostly strengthens the negative stereotypies of Africa. Still I'm glad that the movie has been done: maybe it will make at least some people look at the diamonds they are wearing and wonder if it has cost someone's arm, or worse, life. Diamonds are not every girls best friend - not mine, at least.
The last movie I saw in Ouagadougou's film festival was a big, Hollywood-starred movie Blood Diamond. Both main actors, Leonardo DiCaprio (who spoke French a bit too quickly for me in the dubbed version, so I didn't quite get all the jokes) and Djimon Hounsou (originally from Benin, but nowadays totally americanized),were nomineed for Oscar. The story is about a South African (or Rhodesian, as the main character puts it) diamond smuggler, Danny Archer (Leo), who is doing business in Sierra Leone during the civil war in 1999. The war is basicly financed by the diamonds, which are found plentiful in the country. The plot includes obligatory moral lessons, a love story and bad-guy-converting-into-good parts. All in all, it is a very gripping and entertaining film which I enjoyed watching, even as a French version (but I just couldn't continue for the next film, The Last King of Scotland - Idi Amin speaking French would've been a bit too much for me...)
However, I felt somewhat disturbed, watching the film which on the surface could be any ordinary action movie, but which is based on real people's experiences and suffering. I couldn't help thinking while watching those images of killing, rebels capturing child soldiers and several people chasing the oh-so-wanted diamonds, that all this fits well with the general stereotypies of Africa: war, greed, irrationality, brutality- with some wonderful scenery on the background. The beautiful, but dangerous continent. I am not saying that this Africa doesn't exist - it does, unfortunately - but it is not the Africa I have seen during my trip. I might be a bit naive, but rare have been those moments of fear during my time in West Africa. Of course war zones are something totally different, but for most people the whole of Africa seems to be a potentially lethal place. Besides traffic accidents, pick-pocketing and malaria, the biggest risks I have confronted have been: falling into open sewer ditches at night (especially in Ghana), being beaten up by ghosts (see the post The Night of the Living Dead) or drowning in the sea or the river.
But then we get to the final problem: what kind of images of Africa do we (as non-Africans) want to see? The Beninese director-actor Sylvestre Amoussou (see film Africa Paradis below, in Finnish) told in an interview about his difficulties while trying to find distributors for his film in French cinemas. People were like: "What is this? This story is not credible. Why don't you go and find some nice little true story from your village or something...". It is also a fact that most African artsy films are actually made for European audience, with the support of TV5, Arte, EU etc. Very often films about Africa fall into these two categories: either it is a movie made by Africans, telling a story from a village or some reality-based struggle in peoples' lives. Or it is a Hollywood film, telling about white people in African surroundings, often including a conflict or otherwise a true story (eg. Constant Gardener, The White Masai, Out of Africa etc.). Oh, I don't even know myself what kind of Africa I would like to see on screen, but it would be nice to have some variety. Why aren't there more films about immigration, one of the biggest problems in today's world? Parisian suburbian slums don't make a beautiful setting or what?
To get back to the film itself: Unfortunately, having even the best actors and superb special effects with huge explosions and breath-taking action doesn't mean that the film would turn out to be exceptionally good. In my opinion, Blood Diamond had a bit too much blood (not a surprise maybe, regarding the name of the movie) and bodies in it. Another true-story based film, Hotel Rwanda succeeded much better with much fewer shock effects. Or the Burkinabé short film "Humanitaire!", which I described earlier in Finnish and which luckily received quite a few awards in FESPACO.
So, even if the moviemakers may have had good intentions, to me the film mostly strengthens the negative stereotypies of Africa. Still I'm glad that the movie has been done: maybe it will make at least some people look at the diamonds they are wearing and wonder if it has cost someone's arm, or worse, life. Diamonds are not every girls best friend - not mine, at least.
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