393. African Apocalypse; movie review

 

AFRICAN APOCALYPSE

Cert TBA

92 mins

BBFC advice: TBA

It saddens me that the 200 people who have complained about Dawn French's Vicar of Dibley Black Lives Matter segment on the BBC this Christmas will not watch African Apocalypse.

Indeed, anyone who says "why don't all lives matter?" in response to the anti-racism campaign should see this documentary and then sit in quiet for an hour to digest the points it makes.

Ditto those who bang on about the preservation of history when it comes to the attacks on statues of the likes of slave-owner Edward Colston.

Similarly, those who remember the losses of Western forces across the world over the past 110 years with tears in their eyes but have no such compassion with regard to the massacres which cost tens of thousands of lives in Africa just before the First World War.

African Apocalypse concentrates on one such horror - carried out by French army captain Paul Voulet in Niger.

His atrocities and the consequent French subjugation of the country are still felt very deeply today as British-Nigerian poet and activist Femi Nylander discovers in Rob Lemkin's film.

Nylander's trip to the continent of his ancestors is prompted by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novel which Barack Obama claimed helped him understand why ‘white people are afraid’.

From the mouths of the descendants of those murdered byVoulet, he hears the truth of the genocide of a mission in 1898.

Nylander's journey in tracing Voulet's steps of conquest is an uncomfortable one as is his arrival at his still-guarded grave.

The fact there is a memorial to him but not to a single one of the many thousands slaughtered in not lost on the local historians.

They believe it is because that, in the eyes of white men, black lives didn't matter 120 years ago and they don't matter now.

They speak through gritted teeth of how they mined uranium for the French until recently, providing their former colonial masters with electricity until this day while Niger itself remains largely in darkness.

African Apocalypse prompted my eyes to open. While I was aware of colonialism, the level of barbarism by Western powers had escaped me.

But what really struck me the most was how much it still hurts the indigenous population.

It also poses the question of why hasn't there been a full apology, compensation and a vow to help these countries to the prosperity which they would have enjoyed had The French, British and Belgians not have invaded and killed generations.

Reasons to watch: Heartbreaking true story

Reasons to avoid: The detail is hard to take

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Did you know? As recent as 1976 the expedition was revived by the writer Jacques-Francis Rolland in his Le Grand Captaine which was honoured with the Prix des Maisons de la Presse. In the book, Voulet is seen as a titanic individual, reckless and unsubmissive, bloody for reasons of strategy.

The final word. Rob Lemkin: "When you erect statues of people like Cecil Rhodes and have the likes of our current prime minister saying, “We shouldn’t be taking these statues down because we’re denying history,” there’s a complete blank over the fact that the history of many millions of people has been denied. I think colonialism is the ultimate cancel culture. It’s cancelled culture after culture after culture." BFI

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