Afrique 50

Back after a few days without internet, and before two weeks of revision (I might still post a bit). Managed to find René Vautier's Afrique 50 on internet today, which of course had me tremendously happy. Promptly downloaded it and watched it, here are a few thoughts.

-The film seems to me inextricably linked to its production, reminding me of Assayas's comment that L'Eau Froide was more important as an experience than as a result. This is not the case here, as the film is great seen today, but appreciation of how it was made (illegally, Vautier having run off from the French police in Africa to shoot it; when he came back, most of the material was seized except that fragments that make up the film I saw, for which he recorded the voice-over commentary while in the police station) definitely enhances the experience: here is, for real this time, that old cliché: filming as a weapon, as an act instead of a gaze.

-The voice-over. The use of "tu" for both the audience and the filmmaker, alternately, puts the words of the african subject, said by the filmmaker, and the words of the french citizen (turned dissident) on the same level. The"tu" of the African (note: there is not much indication of where the images come from, which is why I'm using African as an umbrella term) to the filmmaker is worth the same as the "tu" of the filmmaker to his audience. One wonders what the film would have been like with direct sound, which would have enabled Vautier to transmit the African "tu" directly.
The voice-over also provides a violent counterpoint to what I definitely did not expect from the images: their beauty. The sequence of the opening of the dam (around the 8 min mark) actually reminded me of Vertov's Enthusiasm more than anything else in its formal attention to bodies at work. But whereas Vertov praises the bodies who engage in voluntary work, Vautier admires the bodies of the African quasi-slaves while, with the voice-over, virulently denouncing what lies behind that image. The image could be admirable, but the voice-over reminds us that what we admire, in the present conditions, is quasi-slavery. Likewise for the children playing: they play because there is no school.
The voice-over therefore almost becomes an investigation into what we have a right to admire or not. The fervor of the ending minutes, which documents the insurrection and calls for its continuation, is the one moment when euphoric commentary on beautiful images is possible. The genius of it lies in the fact that that euphoric commentary is impossible for what the original target audience (the film was commissioned by the french state for educational purposes) would have considered beautiful, whereas it is necessary for precisely what that audience would not have wanted to face. By its very structure, the film describes the moral inversion at the heart of the colonialist gaze which would view the African as subject beautiful, but the African as citizen intolerable, and restores it to its proper place.

-The music. Possibly the only option to replace the African voice that Vautier could not get? The music here expresses all it should, and everything that western (classical?) music could, but has no right to.