In the end of January we screened the film “Concerning Violence” by the swedish director Göran Olsson in Osnabrück that shows “nine scenes from the anti-imperialist self-defense” in various African countries from the 60s, 70s and 80s.
The film is cut from material of other swedish documentary film teams that were present at that time in these countries. The material is underlined with quotes from Frantz Fanon’s book “The wretched of the Earth”. Not only does the film speak about very important topics and brings up a lot of questions around the topics anti-imperialism and violence, but it also does it in artistic fashion.
Also we as a Regional Group watched it for the first time and were all pretty down afterwards. It’s not really the sometimes brutal imagery that hurt so much but rather the realization that most of what is shown is just forty years in the past and the futility of this thought of superiority that comes to the surface in the interview with the colonialists. Together with the on-the-point analyses of Fanon the film creates an intense message that a lot of what is called colonialism unfortunately is not only in the past but has an affect still on our present.
Who wants to watch the movie his*herself, the film is here on the pages of the bpb (in German…). We highly recommend it!
