“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” This powerful cinematic polemic, based on Martinique-born author and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s 1961 work The Wretched of the Earth, presents “Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self Defence”, archival news-footage and interviews taking us on a whistle-stop tour of colonialism across African countries (Angola, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau among others), interpolated with readings by Lauryn Hill. Alarming footage (ravaged bodies, contorted minds) and bold statements (the voice-over is presented on-screen in text form, a motif apparently inspired by Prince’s Sign o’ the Times music video) skewer America as “a monster” and demand that European peoples, in Fanon’s words, “stop playing the stupid game of the Sleeping Beauty”. Through it all, the changing nature of violence (destructive, cleansing, inevitable) is unravelled in illuminating, harrowing form.
