Africa Addio
Encyclopedia
Africa Addio is a 1966
Italian
documentary about the end of the colonial era in Africa
. The film was released in a shorter format under the names "Africa Blood and Guts" in the USA and "Farewell Africa" in the UK. The film was shot over a period of three years by Gualtiero Jacopetti
and Franco Prosperi, two Italian filmmakers who had gained fame (along with co-director Paolo Cavara
) as the directors of Mondo Cane
in 1962. This film ensured the viability of the so-called Mondo film
genre, a cycle of "shockumentaries"- documentaries featuring sensational topics, which classifications largely characterize "Africa Addio".
in Kenya
.
" slant. Some have objected that the film makes virtually no references to past atrocities and exploitations committed by European colonialists, thus giving the appearance that mass violence in Africa was only a post-colonial phenomenon.
Although the majority of the violence documented is between blacks, black-on-white and white-on-black violence is also documented, as in the scene where white mercenaries liberate a missionary.
Film critic Roger Ebert
, in a scathing 1967 review of the (unauthorised) American version of the film, called it "racist" and said that it "slanders a continent". He noted the opening narration and subtitles:
Co-director Gualtiero Jacopetti was accused of murder and tried in Italy due to accusations that one of the executions which appears in the film was staged for the camera. He was acquitted.
Roger Ebert, in his review, cited several scenes that he found suspect, including one showing white Boer
s leaving Kenya in cattle-drawn wagons to return to Southern Africa
. Ebert wrote that "real Boers (there are a few among the mostly British white population in Kenya) would probably call up a moving van for their furniture and then fly down to the Cape." He also noted a part of the film lamenting how thousands of hippopotamus
es were taken from the Zambezi
River to provide food, retorting that hippopotamus meat is not eaten in that area.
Some discussion also exists about a fox-hunting scene that the English upper class enjoyed organising. A black youth is shown running through the fields, trailing behind him a chunk of a dead fox on a rope. As there are no foxes in Africa, the quick conclusion is drawn by some that this must certainly be a reenactment. But as the film makes clear, the very reason why a youth runs the fields with a dead fox, is because not only are there no foxes but the dogs will only respond to the scent of a fox. Hence a dead fox is imported to produce the chase.
The English version:
IMDB lists the different runtimes for previously-released versions: USA- 122'; Norway- 124'; and Sweden- 116'. An English-language version currently released by Blue Underground runs 128 minutes. The film was released as "Africa Blood and Guts" in the USA in 1970, at only 83 minutes (over 45 minutes removed in order to focus exclusively on scenes of carnage); according to the text of the box for the Blue Underground release, directors Jacopetti and Prosperi both disowned this version. An R-rated version runs at 80 minutes.
The documentary was written, directed, and edited jointly by Gualtiero Jacopetti
and Franco Prosperi and was narrated by Sergio Rossi (not to be confused with the fashion designer of the same name). It was produced by Angelo Rizzoli
.
who had scored Mondo Cane that featured the hit single More
. Lyrics were added to the title song called "Who Can Say?" that was sung by Jimmy Roselli
on the United Artists Records
soundtrack album.
1966 in film
The year 1966 in film involved some significant events.-Events:Animation legend Walter Disney, well known for his creation of Mickey Mouse, died in 15 December 1966 of acute circulatory collapse following a diagnosis of, and surgery for, lung cancer...
Italian
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
documentary about the end of the colonial era in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. The film was released in a shorter format under the names "Africa Blood and Guts" in the USA and "Farewell Africa" in the UK. The film was shot over a period of three years by Gualtiero Jacopetti
Gualtiero Jacopetti
Gualtiero Jacopetti was an Italian director of documentary films.He was born in Barga, in northern Tuscany...
and Franco Prosperi, two Italian filmmakers who had gained fame (along with co-director Paolo Cavara
Paolo Cavara
Paolo Cavara has been a screenwriter and a movie director. He was born in Bolognain 1926.-Biography:During the Fifties, he studied architecture in Florence University, then he realized documentaries for scientific trips, and emerged as a pioneer of the underwater cinematography Paolo Cavara has...
) as the directors of Mondo Cane
Mondo cane
Mondo cane is a documentary written and directed by Italian filmmakers Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti. The film consists of a series of travelogue vignettes that provide glimpses into cultural practices around the world with the intention to shock or surprise Western film...
in 1962. This film ensured the viability of the so-called Mondo film
Mondo film
A mondo film is an exploitation documentary film, sometimes resembling a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, and situations...
genre, a cycle of "shockumentaries"- documentaries featuring sensational topics, which classifications largely characterize "Africa Addio".
Historical events depicted
The film includes footage of the Zanzibar revolution, which included the massacre of approximately 5,000 Arabs in 1964 (estimates range up to 20,000 in the aftermath), as well as of the aftermath of the Mau Mau UprisingMau Mau Uprising
The Mau Mau Uprising was a military conflict that took place in Kenya between 1952 and 1960...
in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
.
Allegations of pro-colonialism
The film has been described by numerous reviewers as having a "pro-white European" and "pro-colonialistColonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
" slant. Some have objected that the film makes virtually no references to past atrocities and exploitations committed by European colonialists, thus giving the appearance that mass violence in Africa was only a post-colonial phenomenon.
Although the majority of the violence documented is between blacks, black-on-white and white-on-black violence is also documented, as in the scene where white mercenaries liberate a missionary.
Film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, in a scathing 1967 review of the (unauthorised) American version of the film, called it "racist" and said that it "slanders a continent". He noted the opening narration and subtitles:
"Europe has abandoned her baby," the narrator mourns, "just when it needs her the most." Who has taken over, now that the colonialists have left? The advertising spells it out for us: "Raw, wild, brutal, modern-day savages!"
Allegations of staging and inauthenticity
There remains controversy over whether all the sequences in the film are real or whether some were staged or reenacted. Jacopetti has stated that all images in the film are real and that nothing was ever staged. In the documentary "The Godfathers of Mondo", the co-directors stated that the only scenes they ever staged were in Mondo Cane 2.Co-director Gualtiero Jacopetti was accused of murder and tried in Italy due to accusations that one of the executions which appears in the film was staged for the camera. He was acquitted.
Roger Ebert, in his review, cited several scenes that he found suspect, including one showing white Boer
Boer
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
s leaving Kenya in cattle-drawn wagons to return to Southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
. Ebert wrote that "real Boers (there are a few among the mostly British white population in Kenya) would probably call up a moving van for their furniture and then fly down to the Cape." He also noted a part of the film lamenting how thousands of hippopotamus
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
es were taken from the Zambezi
Zambezi
The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is , slightly less than half that of the Nile...
River to provide food, retorting that hippopotamus meat is not eaten in that area.
Some discussion also exists about a fox-hunting scene that the English upper class enjoyed organising. A black youth is shown running through the fields, trailing behind him a chunk of a dead fox on a rope. As there are no foxes in Africa, the quick conclusion is drawn by some that this must certainly be a reenactment. But as the film makes clear, the very reason why a youth runs the fields with a dead fox, is because not only are there no foxes but the dogs will only respond to the scent of a fox. Hence a dead fox is imported to produce the chase.
Backlash against the film
- In West Germany, a protest movement against the film emerged after "Africa Addio" was awarded by the state-controlled movie rating board ("Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden"). The protest was chiefly organized by the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) and groups of African students. In West Berlin, the distributor resigned from showing the film after a series of demonstrations and damages to cinemas. Today, the protests against "Africa Addio" are regarded as being the first anti-racist movement in German history.
- The film was banned as racist in Italy.
International opening crawl variations
The film has appeared in a number of different versions. The Italian and French versions were edited and were provided with narration by Jacopetti himself. The American version, with the explicitly shocking title "Africa: Blood and Guts", was edited and translated without the approval of Jacopetti. Indeed, the differences are such that Jacopetti has called this film a betrayal" of the original idea. Notable differences are thus present between the Italian and English-language versions in terms of the text of the film. Many advocates of the film feel that it has unfairly maligned the original intentions of the filmmakers. The subtitled translation of the opening crawl in the Italian version reads:- "The Africa of the great explorers, the huge land of hunting and adventure adored by entire generations of children, has disappeared forever. To that age-old Africa, swept away and destroyed by the tremendous speed of progress, we have said farewell. The devastation, the slaughter, the massacres which we assisted belong to a new Africa– one which if it emerges from its ruins to be more modern, more rational, more functional, more conscious- will be unrecognizable.
- "On the other hand, the world is racing toward better times. The new America rose from the ashes of a few white man, all the redskins, and the bones of millions of buffalo. The new, carved up Africa will rise again upon the tombs of a few white men, millions of black men, and upon the immense graveyards that were once its game reserves. The endeavor is so modern and recent that there is no room to discuss it at the moral level. The purpose of this film is only to bid farewell to the old Africa that is dying and entrust to history the documentation of its agony"
The English version:
- "The old Africa has disappeared. Untouched Jungles, huge herds of game, high adventure, the happy hunting ground- those are the dreams of the past. Today there is a new Africa - modern and ambitious. The old Africa died amidst the massacres and devastations we filmed. But revolutions, even for the better, are seldom pretty. America was built over the bones of thousands of pioneers and revolutionary soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Indians, and millions of Bison. The new Africa emerges over the graves of thousands of whites and Arabs, and millions of blacks, and over the bleak boneyards that once were the game reserves.
- "What the camera sees, it films pitilessly, without sympathy, without taking sides. Judging is for you to do, later. This film only says farewell to the old Africa, and gives to the world the pictures of its agony."
Running length and film credits
Various cuts of the film have appeared over the years. IMDB lists the total runtime as 140 minutes, and a 'complete' version currently offered online via Google Video runs closest to that at 138 minutes, 37 seconds.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4540134202583442015 This is an Italian-language based version, with a clear soundtrack and legible English subtitling.IMDB lists the different runtimes for previously-released versions: USA- 122'; Norway- 124'; and Sweden- 116'. An English-language version currently released by Blue Underground runs 128 minutes. The film was released as "Africa Blood and Guts" in the USA in 1970, at only 83 minutes (over 45 minutes removed in order to focus exclusively on scenes of carnage); according to the text of the box for the Blue Underground release, directors Jacopetti and Prosperi both disowned this version. An R-rated version runs at 80 minutes.
The documentary was written, directed, and edited jointly by Gualtiero Jacopetti
Gualtiero Jacopetti
Gualtiero Jacopetti was an Italian director of documentary films.He was born in Barga, in northern Tuscany...
and Franco Prosperi and was narrated by Sergio Rossi (not to be confused with the fashion designer of the same name). It was produced by Angelo Rizzoli
Angelo Rizzoli
Angelo Rizzoli was an Italian publisher and film producer.- Early life :Orphaned at a young age and raised in poverty, Rizzoli rose to prosperity...
.
Soundtrack
A soundtrack of the music used in the film was later released. The composer was Riz OrtolaniRiz Ortolani
Riziero "Riz" Ortolani is an Italian film composer.In the early 1950s Ortolani was founder and member of a jazz band of national Italian renown...
who had scored Mondo Cane that featured the hit single More
More (Theme from Mondo Cane)
"More " is a film score song written by Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero for the 1962 Mondo film Mondo cane. Originally composed as an instrumental and titled "Ti guarderò nel cuore", lyrics were later provided by Marcello Ciorciolini, which were adapted into English by Norman Newell...
. Lyrics were added to the title song called "Who Can Say?" that was sung by Jimmy Roselli
Jimmy Roselli
Michael John "Jimmy" Roselli was one of the most significant Italian-American pop singers of his time, during an era of formidable competition from such performers as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Vic Damone and Jerry Vale.-Life:Jimmy Roselli's biggest and only pop hit was...
on the United Artists Records
United Artists Records
United Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:...
soundtrack album.
Track listing
- Africa addio (03:24)
- I mercenari (02:17)
- Il massacro di Maidopei (04:22)
- Cape Town (02:02)
- Prima del diluvio (03:18)
- Le ragazze dell'oceano (03:55)
- Verso la libertà (02:40)
- Paradiso degli animali (01:58)
- Il nono giorno (04:38)
- Goodbye Mister Turnball (02:07)
- Lo zebrino volante (02:05)
- La decimazione (05:26)
- Finale Africa addio (02:15)