We Come As Friends: Colonial Pathologies in the African Continent

In 2016 Sub-Saharan Africa finds itself at the epicentre of a global conflict between neo-imperial superpowers, with the flows of globalised capitalism converging to inflict environmental degradation and human exploitation on a grotesque scale. Panellists will discuss the central re-formulation of old colonial pathologies and how their representation in cinema might help shape our understanding of a complex and devastating form of 21st century conflict.

The panel will be chaired by Finn Daniels-Yeomans (Africa in Motion, University of Glasgow).

This event is free and unticketed.

A series of short stories from post-revolution Libya, filmed over three years by local emergent filmmakers. In documenting different facets of life in Libya during this turbulent period, the filmmakers have allowed us the chance to see their country beyond the news reports and headlines. Instead, the films are brief insights into the lives of people trying to find normality in a world of chaos and a testament to the courage and resilience of the filmmakers and the Libyan people as a whole.

A modern, dizzying, science fiction-like odyssey into the heart of Africa. At the moment when the Sudan, the continent’s biggest country, is being divided into two nations, an old ‘civilizing’ pathology re-emerges – that of colonialism, clash of empires, and renewed episodes of bloody (and holy) wars over land and resources. The director of Darwin’s Nightmare (2004) takes us on this voyage in his tiny, self-made flying machine of tin and canvas, leading us into people’s thoughts and dreams, in both stunning and heartbreaking ways. Adopting a vérité style inflected with elements of surrealism, Sauper pieces together the strange relationships between Chinese oil workers, UN peacekeepers, Sudanese warlords, and American evangelists.

We Were Rebels tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build up his country. The film accompanies him over a period of two years – from South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013. As a child soldier, Agel had to kill and also lost almost all of his male relatives. Later he managed to flee via Kenya to Australia, where he became a professional basketball player and returned to South Sudan a free man. Today, just two years after gaining its independence, the world’s youngest nation is once again teetering on the edge of a precipice: More than half a million people are fleeing the country, and Agel is fighting as a soldier once again.

This is the untold story of how an African dictator has been able to commit mass murder and still get a regular audience at The White House and 10 Downing Street. A Brilliant Genocide is a political expose and human rights documentary that details the untold story of suffering and an unrecognized genocide against the Acholi people of northern Uganda by the current Government, under President Yoweri Museveni, who has for decades been staunch ally to the west. But has the West been hoodwinked by this deceptive devil in disguise, the face of democracy in Africa, the US’s strongest ally in the region and who Clinton once called “a beacon of hope on the African continent”, or have they turned a blind eye and knowingly been dancing with the devil for their own selfish and strategic interests?

A Brilliant Genocide is the keynote film for our Critical Forum discussion, Looking for Truth: Programming Documentary Film Festivals, which follows the screening at 15:00 in the CCA Clubroom.