Concerning Violence

Having cast new light on the Civil Rights era in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, documentarist Goran Hugo Olsson creates a compelling treatise on the use of physical and psychological violence in the oppression of Africa between the 1960s and 80s. Dividing the discussion into nine chapters, Olsson counterpoints the footage with extracts from the first chapter of Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon's provocative denunciation of colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth, which are not only read with measured emphasis by singer-activist Lauryn Hill, but are also printed on the screen so that their meaning hits home with redoubled power. Some of the most disconcerting imagery involves the casual racism of white Africans in British outposts like Rhodesia, where the inferiority of the black majority was taken as read. But Olsson is quick to expose the fallacy of the "White Man's Burden", as he shows a Swedish missionary couple and a mine boss betray the true nature of their intentions. Several segments deal with resistance movements in places such as Angola and Mozambique, and the human cost of struggle is chillingly shown in the sight of a breast-feeding mother and baby who have both lost limbs in a bomb blast.