Very little is know about the African cultures of the past and present, but there is growing interest all over the world in joining up the pieces of this complex, historical puzzle and publicising new proposals in the fields of arts and letters which can help re-construct a cultural identity of the African continent and enrich our global imagery.
The earliest films date from colonial times at the beginning of the 20th century, and were made to publicise the mission to civilise and convert to Christianity there “backward, savage, heathen people”. With this excuse, Africa was despoiled of its raw material s and a covert cultural genocide was perpetrated in the wake of three centuries of slavery. It was at that time that the first anthropological missions (staged more or less in the colonial cause) produced numerous ethnographic film records. In the 1940s interesting work began to be produced by major filmmakers such as Jean Rouch and René Vautier. In Spain, little-known directo Manuel Hernández Sanjuán made 31 short propaganda films in the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea between 1944 and 1946. These films have been recovered from the collection of the National Film Library by production company We Are Here Films (Mbini, managed by Vic Pereiró and Pere Ortín, Altair).
The prolific French filmmaker and ethnographer Jean Rouch (1917-2004) was closely linked with West Africa. As a civil engineer and builder of bridges and roads, he made his first journey along the Niger in the 1940s as part of a road construction project. Shortly afterwards he joined the French resistance during World War II. Some years later he travelled through Senegal, Mali , Burkina Faso and Ghana, where he made numerous films depicting different African cultures. He was influenced by Vertov and Flaherty, and in the 1950s he changed the focus of his ethnographic documentaries. Films such as Les Maîtres fous (1954) and above all Moi, un noir (1958)saw the birth of what became known as “ethnofiction”. Rather than trying to capture reality as it actually was, or was supposed to be, Rouch sought to provoke situations in regard to the local people who were the focus of his films. Moi, un noir saw him break with ethnographic tradition by demolishing the barriers between documentary films and fiction. This and his next film, Chronique d´un été (1960), were among the original inspirations for the cinéma vérité which so inspired the Nouvelle Vague of Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol etc.
René Vautier (1928) represents a different way of seeing filmmaking. He became an activist for social justice and freedom when he joined the SCM as a teenager, and seven today continues to fight against censorship and the misuse of power. As a member of the Communist party he took part in the French Resistance and was awarded the Croix de Guerre medal at the age of 16. After the war he studied film-making at the IDHEC film school, where he remained true to his convictions and filmed various strikes. In 1949 he accepted a post at the Ligue de l´Enseignement and left for the French Sudan to film local peasants there. This gave him the chance to see the inhuman conditions in which they lived. Ignoring a ban imposed by the colonial governor, Vautier filmed atrocities which brought to mind the memory of the Nazis. This adventure provided the seed which blossomed into Afrique 50, his first anti-colonial film, for which all his material was confiscated (he was able to rescue only a few reels) and he suffered 13 judicial hearings, a year in prison and 40 years of censorship. As well as denouncing the events that he was filming, he made the last part of his film into an expression of hope for a nascent, unstoppable pan-African union of peoples struggling for independence. While he was editing this film he rejoined the struggle of the working classes and produced a renowned short film called Un homme est mort, which recounted the death of a worker from a police bullet. This film was shown hundreds of times by strike committees until it eventually wore out completely. It was an example of films as a means of social intervention: a reflection of actual events the making of which seeks to forestall the manipulation entailed by official reports which deny those affected the right to a voice.
A few years later he became involved in the Algerian war of independence (1959-1962) after which he wrote Peuple en marche (1962), which contained images of the war and the earliest days of Algeria as a free country. Until 1965 he ran the Films School in Algiers. He then returned to Brittany, where he interviewed French people who had been through the war, so as to document their experiences. The result was Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès (1971), a fiction film based on actual eye-witness accounts which earned him the Critics´Week Prize at the 1972 Cannes festival.
With the support of other affected filmmakers such as Resnais and Sautet, in 1973 he staged a hunger strike to demand and end to political censorship, which ended in success. he was also involved with other causes, working for instance against apartheid in South Africa, racism in France, support of the situation of women, fascism, pollutions, etc.
He is currently attempting to recover some of his 140 films declared of public interest by the French Film Academy, so that this hugely valuable legacy is available wherever his message needs to be heard. Hence the importance of ensuring continuity and of adapting this way of seeing film to the new, technology-based society with all its powers. The question is how to ensure their dissemination in the face of the widespread veto imposed by TV stations and digital broadcasting platforms. Along with his social interventions, using his camera to give voices and faces to those who are not allowed to be heard, Vautier uses his “dialogues in pictures” between opposing realities to encourage awareness and acceptance of events concerning the reality of other which have been ignored, in a clear attempt to offset the imbalances and injustices inherent in human relations.
It is therefore a great honour for the 51st ZINEBI film festival, and indeed for the city of Bilbao, to pay tribute to this universal Breton in acknowledgement of his commitment to ethics as a the duty of a man in remembrance of those who gave their lives for the Resistance.
Jesús Ahedo
