"When men die they become history. Once statues die they become art".
This film is about magic. The magic of creation enacted through the art of imagination.
For those engaged in this act become like Gods.
They show us that all things are connected to everything that have come before it, unlike in white colonial culture, where everything has become disconnected and at odds with one another. A perspective that is wholly unnatural.
It's also a film about immortality. Posing the question: would man exist at all if not for art?
They point out that man- like the Gods- can transcend death through the materialization of their double- once a shadow or reflection- into a material form.
But statues can also die...crumbling to pieces...or being buried in the archives of museums and institutions. Fading away, into nothingness. Like a dead language. Losing their magic through the effect of commercialization and reproduction.
External incursions have disconnected African people from their past, via the imposition of christian and islamic psychophants, who have taken their place...as their "new" ancestors.
While their world becomes a mere reproduction of the one that has conquered it.
And under such circumstances, the only "living art", becomes that of rebellion. It's form fleeting and transitory.
As all other forms become degraded by the colonizers who consume it, and for whom it is now produced- as either trinkets or spectacle.
This rebellion, thus, begins to manifest itself in new forms- such as sport, labour activism and music (like jazz)- through which those who have been disconnected from their past, start to push back against the fragile white ego, and culture, that tries to keep them repressed, every time they show signs of new life.
Marker, Resnais and Choqlain conclude this manifesto, by stating that magic can only be restored to our realms when all the pasts of all the people are given absolute equality. For if art created man as man created art, we are all, today, products of all the great cultures of yesterday.
The domineering aspect of white supremacy is quite literally...killing us all.
10 out of 10.
