Best Documentaries About Africa
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You enjoy documentaries right? Let’s be honest, most these days don’t make the time to read about biographies or current events. The majority of people would most likely watch a movie on say Idi Amin than read books about him (especially the younger generation). Documentaries are essential in keeping you informed but also broadening your perspective. Not only does it invite discussion on a myriad of topics but encourages you to be more involved in the world.
Here’s an excellent list of 31 documentaries about Africa or mentions that will entertain and educate you.
Kudos to Sprword for this piece reprinted in full here for your convenience.
Invisible Children
Directed by Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole
“Without having seen the suffering in Northern Uganda, I’m appalled frankly, it’s a moral outrage to see thousands of children that have been abducted, that are maltreated, that go through the most horrendous torture by the rebel movement and also the same groups now being neglected, to some extent, by the whole international community. I can not find any other part of the world having an emergency at the scale of Uganda with so little international attention.”
What started out as a film-making adventure in Africa, transformed into much more, when the three young American’s (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole) original travels took a divine turn, and they found themselves stranded in Northern Uganda. They discovered children being kidnapped nightly from their homes and subsequently forced to become fight as child soldiers. This film is dedicated to exposing this tragic, and amazingly untold story.
Even at this moment, in Uganda, Children as young as 8 are methodically kidnapped from their homes by a rebel group called the “Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA). The abducted children are then desensitized to the horror of brutal violence and killing, as they themselves are turned into vicious fighters. Some escape and hide in constant fear for their lives. Most remain captive, and grow to maturity with no education other than life “in the bush” and fighting in a guerilla war. Of the many ramifications that a 20 -year-long war can cause, the film “Invisible Children: Rough Cut” highlights what the community refers to as “NIGHT COMMUTERS.” We watch thousands of children “commute” out of fear, from their villages to nearby towns each night in order to avoid the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) abductions. They sleep in public places, vulnerable, and without supervision. (Excerpt from main website)
War Dance
Directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine
“Music is the most important part of Acholi culture. It is our tradition. Even war cannot take it away from us.”
For the past twenty years, northern Uganda has been at war with a rebel force, the Lord’s Resistance Army (L.R.A), and the country’s children have been the greatest victims of the conflict. But here, the children are not only the victims of the rebels, they are the rebels. The L.R.A has a chillingly effective process to fill its ranks – abducting innocent children. Under the cover of darkness, the rebels raid villages to kidnap new soldiers. Children – some as young as five – are ripped from their beds in front of their helpless parents. Once abducted, the children are forced at gunpoint to viciously beat or kill neighbors, and sometimes even their own parents. The boys become soldiers while the girls are forced into sexual slavery.
After two decades, there is little sign of peace on the horizon. But amidst the grief and violence, voices are heard – children’s voices – singing strong, without fear. Their bodies shake and stomp to the rhythms of their ancestors. They dance about their homeland, they dance about their future, they dance to be children…and they dance to win. Across the country, Ugandan children are getting ready for the biggest even of the year, the National Music Competition. Over 20,000 schools will compete, but only one will go home the champion, and no one expects it to be Patongo. Schools in refugee camps don’t win awards.
WAR/DANCE follows the courageous efforts of Patongo’s students as they pour their hearts into winning this years’ music competition. The war has stolen their homes, their parents, and their childhood. Patongo’s refugee camp packs 60,000 people into its endless squalor. There is no electricity, no running water, and no safe place. The bullet holes in the school walls tell the stories the children would rather forget. Two years ago, the L.R.A. dragged 29 students from Patongo’s schoolhouse to “join” the army. (Excerpt from main website)
Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.wardancethemovie.com
Return to Africa’s Witch Children
Directed by Mags Gavan & Joost Van Der Valk
“One year ago, Dispatches revealed how children in Africa’s Niger Delta were being denounced by Christian Pastors as witches and wizards. Many were then murdered, tortured, or made outcasts by their own families all in the name of God.”
In 2008 a Bafta and Emmy Award-winning Dispatches told the story of how children in Africa’s Niger Delta were being denounced by Christian pastors as witches and wizards and then killed, tortured or abandoned by their own families.
The film, which prompted international outrage against a practice conducted in the name of Jesus, forced the Nigerian authorities and the UN to act.
Child rights legislation came into force making it illegal to brand children as witches and some pastors were arrested. Financial support also poured in to assist a small British charity (Stepping Stones Nigeria) providing the only safe refuge for hundreds of youngsters attacked after claims that they were possessed by the Devil. (Excerpt from main website)
The Great African Scandal
Produced by Robert Beckford
“Has the West replaced slavery with economic chains? For several decades, western companies and organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have effectively run the economies of many African countries.”
Academic Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in natural resources is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse. (Excerpt from video.google.com)
Blood Coltan
Directed by Patrick Forestier
“The mobile phone is a remarkable piece of engineering. But look inside. There’s blood in this machine. There’s blood in this device because your mobile contains tiny electronic circuits, and they couldn’t work without mineral called COLTAN. It’s mined in the eastern Congo. There is blood here, the blood of Congolese who are dying in a terrible conflict.”
The West’s demand for Coltan, used in mobile phones and computers, is funding the killings in Congo. Under the close watch of rebel militias, children as young as ten work the mines hunting for this black gold. ‘Blood Coltan’ exposes the web of powerful interests protecting this blood trade. Meet the powerful warlords who enslave local population and the European businessmen who continue importing Coltan, in defiance of the UN.(Excerpt from main website)
Apartheid Did Not Die
Directed by John Pilger
“Apartheid based on race is outlawed now, but the system always went far deeper than that. The cruelty and injustice were underwritten by an economic apartheid, which regarded people as no more than cheap expendable labor. It was backed by great business corporations in South Africa, Britain, the rest of Europe, and the United States. And it was this apartheid based on money and profit to allow a small minority to control most of the land, most of the industrial wealth, and most of the economic power. Today, the same system is called – without a trace of irony – the free market.”
John Pilger was banned from South Africa for his reporting during the apartheid era. On his return thirty years later with Alan Lowery, he describes the extraordinary generosity of a liberated people, but asks who are the true beneficiaries of a democracy – the black majority or the white minority? Won the Gold Award in the category of ‘Film & Video Production: Political/International Issues’, Worldfest-Flagstaff, 1998; Certificate for Creative Excellence (third place), U.S. International Film & Video Festival, Elmhurst, Illinois, 1999. (Excerpt from video.google.com)
Flow – For Love of Water
Directed by Irena Salina
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” –W.H.Auden
Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century – The World Water Crisis.
Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.
Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question “CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?”
Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround. (Excerpt from main website)
Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Directed by Sam Bozzo
“This is not a film about saving the environment; it’s a film about saving ourselves. Because whatever one’s environmental, political, or religious opinions; whatever one’s race, sex, or economic standing; whomever of us goes without water for a week cries blood.”
In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.
Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.
We follow numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water, from court cases to violent revolutions to U.N. conventions to revised constitutions to local protests at grade schools. As Maude Barlow proclaims, “This is our revolution, this is our war”. A line is crossed as water becomes a commodity. Will we survive? (Excerpt from main website)
Child Slavery with Rageh Omaar
Directed by Rageh Omaar
“We abolished slavery in Britain 200 hundred years ago, but according to the UN, there are nearly 8.5 million child slaves around the world.”
Slavery is a word which immediately conjures up very specific images in our minds. When it is mentioned we tend to think of people, almost always black people; degraded, abused and bound in chains, and we tend to think of such images, and the word slavery itself, as belonging to another era. We do not see slavery as belonging to our world, not as something which is still happening today.
Yet the truth is that if William Wilberforce were alive today and he travelled to different parts of the world – not just in Africa, but also in large parts of Asia, the Middle East, South America and even parts of Europe – he would find children living in conditions and circumstances which Wilberforce would understand and which I am sure he would describe as slavery. It is believed there are nearly nine million children around the world today who are enslaved. There are international charters and covenants which try to come to a legal definition of what constitutes slavery.
In essence these documents define slavery in the modern world as a situation where a human being and their labour are owned by others, and where that person does not have the freedom to leave and is forced into a life which is exploitative, humiliating and abusive. (Excerpt from main website)
Frontline: The Diamond Empire
Directed by Gavin MacFadyen
“What we think about diamonds, is in fact, a myth. At the center of that myth is an illusion, that diamonds are valuable because they are rare. When writer Edward Epstein set out to investigate the diamond trade, he discovered that diamonds aren’t rare at all.”
Second only to Christmas, Valentine’s Day is the holiday when diamonds are most often given as the ultimate token of love. Central to the diamond’s role as a romantic symbol is the belief that diamonds are one of the rarest, most precious gifts for a loved one. But it’s only a myth–diamonds are found in plentiful supply. FRONTLINE examines how the great myth about the scarcity of diamonds and their inflated value was created and maintained over the decades by the diamond cartel. This report chronicles how one family, the Oppenheimers of South Africa, gained control of the supply, marketing, and pricing of the world’s diamonds. (Excerpt from main website)
Please visit site for more information:
http://www.pbs.org
Slavery: A Global Investigation
Produced By True Vision London
“The global economy has created immense wealth in the West, but it has also spawned a sinister new market in slaves – in Africa, Asia and South America, and on our own doorsteps in the capitals of Britain and the U.S.”
True Vision of London produced this 80-minute documentary, inspired by Free the Slaves President Kevin Bales’ award-winning book Disposable People, exposes cases of slavery around the world.www.freetheslaves.net
Filmmakers Brian Edwards and Kate Blewett actually buy slaves in Africa and help free child slaves in India. The film exposes slavery in the rug-making sector of Northwest India, the cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast, and even the home of a World Bank official in Washington, D.C. Small, personal stories of slavery are woven together to tell the larger story of slavery in the global economy. Slavery won the Peabody Award in 2001. (Excerpt from video.google.com)
THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?
Directed by Foster Gamble and Kimberly Carter Gamble
“But as powerful as they are, the architects of the new world order cannot create their dreadful vision withour our collusion. To stop them, to render their agenda obsolete, we have to wake up. We have to take action.”
THRIVE is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what’s REALLY going on in our world by following the money upstream — uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.(Excerpt from website)
Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.thrivemovement.com/the_movie
Anthrax War
Directed by Bob Coen
“One week before 9/11, a Pulitzer prize winning, Judith Miller, and two New York Times colleagues broke a front page story revealing the U.S. had been weaponizing anthrax as part of several secret programs.”
Anthrax War is a ground-breaking feature length documentary which illuminates one of the most important stories of our age – the threat that a terrifying Germ War Arms Race may now be beginning around the globe…
Just weeks after 9/11, the United States was confronted with the frightening reality of biological terrorism. Anthrax-laced letters sent to government and media offices in Washington and New York spread fear and panic around the world. Millions were put at risk, scores were infected and five people died. For the first time in modern history, the United States Congress was shut down. Our collective nightmare of germ warfare – the attack of invisible, deadly bugs – had come to life…
Anthrax War takes viewers into the Bio-defense labs of the United States and the U.S. Military’s testing grounds in the deserts of the American southwest. The filmmakers travel to a top-secret military installation of the former Soviet Union where anthrax escaped thirty years ago, where civilians are still living with the consequences, and where biological weapons work may be continuing. They move on to the savannas of southern Africa, where they meet “Doctor Death” and his associates of the notorious Project Coast who experimented with anthrax and other designer germs during the Apartheid Era. And where the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks may have originated.
As they travel to the world’s bio-war ‘hot zones’, the filmmakers encounter people confronting the new threat of germ warfare today – investigators, politicians, and journalists probing this nightmare world as well as scientists, legislators and citizen activists working to warn the world that biological arms proliferation will prove catastrophic. Anthrax War is a wake-up call about what’s happening NOW… (Excerpt from main website)
Not For Sale
Produced by The Observatorio of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
“Big multinational corporations are not only threatening the interests of the developing countries, but they are also carrying out their daunting and incontrollable actions within developed countries. The trust we have in ourselves, our faith in humanity, and the certainty that our values will prevail, cannot be destroyed.” -Salvador Allende
People all around the world are becoming increasingly dependent on a small number of large multinational businesses. Monsanto controls 90% of the production of genetically modified seeds. Microsoft holds an 88.26% market share of the software industry, followed by apple with Mac who hold 9.93%. Everyday, 150 million people throughout the world, buy an Unilever product without even realising it. McDonalds, serve 58.1million meals a day around the world. 51 of the worlds 100 biggest economies are businesses. The state loses power at the same rate as businesses gains it. Globalisation has created a context which requires a redefinition of the rules for global 21st century society.
Within this context rises the debate of Social Corporate Responsibility. Companies should re-establish the balance between economic development, sustainable environment and the social development needed in order to build the new society that we long for. Even though a gradual interest in Coporate Social Responsibility is appearing as much in business circles as in social circles, the process is still slow. Meanwhile, the set-up of new norms that regulate the global activity of the companies and prevent negative impacts on the environment and human rights, are becoming more than ever necessary.
It is time that we consider the type of society which we wish to build, and what role we want to play in its development. We must assume the role of all of those affected by the application of responsible practices, throughout all areas of business activity including consumers, workers and public opinion. (Excerpt from main website)
Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.noalaventa.com
Human Resources
Directed by Scott Noble
‘Give me a baby and I can make any kind of man.’ These are the words of John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism. According to this world view, the behavior of organisms, including human beings, is predictable and therefore controllable.
In 1920, at John Hopkins University, Watson experimented on several babies ranging in age from 3 months to a year. The experiments were remarkable in their simplicity. He would present a candle to infants to see if they were afraid of fire, he would introduce animals to their environment to see if children were afraid of them naturally or only after a traumatic experience. He would make a hissing noise and observe the results. Watson learned that new born babies had no fear of the dark. He also learned however that such fear could be conditioned, and so it was, with rabbits.
From his experiments, Watson reached a radical conclusion which would come to define political and social engineering in the 20th century. The driving force in society he claimed is not love, but fear. (Excerpt from film)
Psywar
Directed by Scott Noble
“Propaganda has become the primary means by which the wealthy communicate with the rest of society. Whether selling a product, a political candidate, a law, or a war, seldom do the powerful delivery messages to the public before consulting their colleagues in the public relations industry.”
Here in the United States, we’re often brought up and told we don’t have propaganda. That we have a hard-charging investigative crass, we have this educated, skeptical, even cynical citizenry and that if there were powerful interests trying to manage and manipulate public opinion, they would be exposed.
The reality actually is just the opposite. Academics like Alex Cary and others who’ve spent their lifetimes looking at how propaganda works, finds that it’s actually in western democracies and open societies where you need the most sophisticated sorts of propaganda. Since World War I, thanks to people like Ivy Lee and Eddie Bernays… propaganda has become a business, this business of public relations. (Excerpt from film)
Please visit the official website for more information:
http://metanoia-films.org
HOME
Directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
“The engine of life is linkage. Everything is linked. Nothing is self-sufficient…Sharing is everything.”
In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it’s too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth’s riches and change its patterns of consumption.
By bringing us unique footage from over fifty countries, all seen from the air, by sharing with us his wonder and his concern, with this film Yann Arthus-Bertrand lays a foundation stone for the edifice that, together, we must rebuild. (Excerpt from main website)
Addicted to Plastic
Directed by Ian Connacher
“The Roman Empire may have been defeated by lead in their water pipes and I learned that we too might be risking future generations with the cheapest, strongest, most ubiquitous material ever invented. Plastic might be quietly poisoning us.”
ADDICTED TO PLASTIC is a feature-length documentary about solutions to plastic pollution. The point-of-view style documentary encompasses three years of filming in 12 countries on 5 continents, including two trips to the middle of the Pacific Ocean where plastic debris accumulates. The film details plastic’s path over the last 100 years and provides a wealth of expert interviews on practical and cutting edge solutions to recycling, toxicity and biodegradability. These solutions – which include plastic made from plants – will provide viewers with a hopeful perspective about our future with plastic. (Excerpt from main website)
Good Copy Bad Copy
Directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, & Henrik Moltke
“All of this brings us to the perhaps most interesting issue about intellectual property and about copyright. And that is, who really owns what? And what is the purpose of copyright?”
Good Copy Bad Copy documents the conflict between current copyright law and recent technological advances that enable the Sampling of music, as well as the distribution of copyrighted material via peer-to-peer file sharing searchengines such as The Pirate Bay. MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) CEO Dan Glickman is interviewed in connection with a raid by the Swedish police against The Pirate Bay in May 2006. Glickman concedes that piracy will never be stopped, but states that they will try to make it as difficult and tedious as possible. Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij from The Pirate Bay are also interviewed, with Neij stating that The Pirate Bay is illegal according to US law, but not Swedish law.
The interviews document attitudes towards art, culture and copyright in a number of countries, including theUS, Sweden, Russia, Nigeria, and Brazil.
The situation in Nigeria and Brazil is documented in terms of innovative business models that have developed in response to new technological possibilities and changing markets. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)
Africa Addio (Farewell Africa)
Directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi
“The global economy has created immense wealth in the West, but it has also spawned a sinister new market in slaves – in Africa, Asia and South America, and on our own doorsteps in the capitals of Britain and the U.S.”
Africa Addio is an Italian documentary film made in 1966 about the end of the colonial era in Africa. The film was released under the names “Africa Blood and Guts” in the USA (which was only half of the entire film) and “Farewell Africa” in the UK. The movie documents some of the disruptions caused by decolonization, such as poaching in former animal preserves and bloody revolutions, including the Zanzibar revolution which resulted in the massacre of approximately 5000 Arabs in 1964. In most of its edited incarnations, the movie leaves out mention of similar atrocities that were committed under colonial powers. While the film claims to dispassionately show reality, it has been criticized as biased by many viewers over the years (perhaps most notably Roger Ebert).
The film was shot over a period of three years, by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, two Italian filmmakers who had gained fame a few years earlier (with co-director Paolo Cavara) as the directors ofMondo Cane in 1962. This film launched the so-called Mondo film genre, a cycle of documentaries or “shockumentaries” which often featured sensational topcis, of which “Africa Addio” is arguably a part (it is included in the “Mondo Cane Collection” currently being distributed by Blue Underground). (Excerpt from Wikipedia)