Africa addio

Poachers mindlessly killing game for fun and profit. Hands being chopped off a la Colonial Congo. Arabs being massacred on mass during the Zanzibar revolution. Simba rebels killing and being executed in return. White mercenaries fighting in the Congo.

All of these things, and many more, are followed by this classic Mondo film. It's flawed (its narrative is shamelessly colonialist, avoiding all the atrocities that the colonizers committed and the actual causes for nationalism that led to these tragedies), but this is Heart of Darkness for the film generation: It is a glimpse into the worst that Africa has to offer, and nobody comes out looking good.

Highly recommended, if you got the stomach to watch some of the most senseless butchery ever recorded on film. If only these guys had done Vietnam.

I watched this film last month and I was blown away. In the documentary form, some film makers use a narrator while others let the subjects tell the story in their own words. This film uses bold and dynamic cinematography to tell this gripping and sadly true tale in a way more powerful than any other narrative format. This movie was filmed using a variety of 16mm and 35mm motion pictures cameras. Virtually all of the shots are hand held and I was not surprised to later learn the the Director of Photography was awarded an Oscar for one of his previous works. I spent the summer of 2002 touring Africa and I stayed in a few of the locations shown in this film. I was amazed to see the splendor of the cities in this film which stood in stark contrast to the squalid ruins I witness less than forty years after this masterpiece was made. It was amazing to see how beautiful and vibrant these areas once were. Now it's a wasteland were life is both short and very cheap. This film is pure genius. It also represents a cautionary tale to other peoples of what can happen when the political and economic stability of a society dissipates. Also, one can't help but realize the severe consequences visited upon those naive souls who traded their prosperity, freedoms and security with the avid encouragement of those lefty do-gooders who led them down the path of ruin in the name of "casting away the chains of imperialism." After the continent imploded, these would be social engineers disappeared in the dark of night returning to their homes in London, New York and Paris to see what other societies they could ruin with their idealogical snake oil. They, by default, left to other the impossible task of cleaning up their mess.

The democracy our hapless African brothers and sisters thought they would receive never materialized and when their paternalistic European guardians left, most of these people suffered under the most brutal forms totalitarianism, crime, starvation and tribal genocide. They jumped blindfolded from their frying pans and landed in the fire. Would anyone dare say they are better off today then they were forty years ago? Food for thought.

This is a very well done documentary. But what it shows will mortify you. I was yelling at the screen.

The atrocities against the animals in this documentary absolutely made me sick. Animals are slaughtered relentlessly, cruelly and for no reason other than the sport of it. I wanted those wild animals to rip their killers to shreds. At least once it would have been nice to see one of the poachers ripped to shreds by the elephants, lions and hippos.

It never ceases to sicken me how a man with a gun thinks he has really accomplished something by shooting an animal. Watching the men stand proudly with their gun over the carcass of an animal for a photo just makes me sick. They should all have been fed to the lions.

This documentary proves one thing and one thing only. Humans are the sickest and cruelest animals on the planet.

Sent to Africa to make the next Mondo Cane movie the film makers found themselves in the middle of several revolutions. What they would film would form the basis of a damning attack on everyone, both black and white, involved in the shift in power on the Dark Continent.

I've watched the three versions of this film and I'm a fan of all of them. Interestingly the one I like the least is the original cut of the film which has several snide comments and re-dubbed voices that make the film truly rude and cruel for no good reason. The original cut goes out of its way to have a holier than thou view that is missing from both of the English cuts. The original cut also has several more minutes of animal cruelty that is completely uncalled for.

This film ran into serious trouble upon its original release because charges were brought, though later found to be false, that the film makers had paid some of the soldiers to kill some one so that they could film it. (this charge would form the basis for The Wild Eye, a fictional film about the making of a mondo movie made by another Mondo Cane director) Considering all of the the death and destruction in this film I find it hard to believe that anyone would have had to have been paid to kill anyone.

Yes, its a tough film, but it leaves no one with clean hands, even the film makers.

See this film. It will make you think.

This just aired on the small (digital) "culture" channel here in Finland. I am not sure whether this was the censored or the uncensored version - if this was the censored one I don't even want to think about what might be in the uncensored version.

Very very very impressive photography and - above all - editing. It *is* in parts very gruesome (esp. animal lovers should be prepared for some depictions of mindless cruelty) - but it also shows beautiful things, black, white, animal and floral.

That this is hard to come by today I can understand, it is just impossible politically incorrect (and must have been so at the time too). The makers of this movie seem to sympathise with everyone and no-one