>>>REVIEW
THE EMPIRE IN AFRICA
Movies That Matter Mini-Festival
DIRECTED BY Phillippe Diaz
Friday, March 16
University of Calgary, 6 p.m. (MFH 162)
Most of us that follow the news know that certain parts of Africa are in deep trouble – be it because of AIDS, civil war, oppressive regimes, poverty or all of the above. But, despite countless photos of refugees and wide-eyed orphans on the verge of starvation, most of us find ourselves distancing ourselves from these issues – Africa’s pain is just too unpleasant to deal with from the comfort of our living rooms. With The Empire in Africa, filmmaker Phillippe Diaz hones in on the civil war in Sierra Leone and tries to bridge the distance between the Western eye and African reality.
The film Blood Diamond has given the Hollywood treatment to the plight of Sierra Leone, but Diaz is determined to offer a less glossy version of the conflict between the RUF rebels and the official U.N.-approved government. While the details of the conflict are utterly horrifying, Diaz’s film does little to convey the drama of real-life events. The images used throughout the movie are powerful – graphic footage of children being beaten, men being executed, bodies being burned and non-stop images of limbless victims of both factions of the conflict. Unfortunately, Diaz doesn’t provide a compelling context for the images – his loose narrative and parade of interviews focus on the political aspects of the war, with the carnage only serving as very distressing window dressing.
Diaz should be commended for his refusal to sensationalize the issues, but with its soft-spoken narrator and loosely held-together plotline, The Empire in Africa comes off more like dry school textbook than a hard-hitting documentary. While Diaz does successfully illustrate the international community’s complicity in the civil war, he does little to create a case for the people of Sierra Leone. We’re already so numbed by images of African atrocities, despite the starkness of those within the movie, that without a proper context it’s hard to feel more than that growing sense of distance. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.