Africa Blood and Guts

Africa Addio is a brutal, dishonest, racist film. It slanders a continent and at the same time diminishes the human spirit. And it does so to entertain us.

If this isn't meant as a parody (which I don't think it is), then it is so inept that it goes well beyond tastelessness into sheer stupidity.

Africa Addio affords some journalistic integrity, which is sacrificed, as per usual and at most every opportunity, to find graphic animal deaths and women.

AFRICA ADDIO (1966) is a difficult work to evaluate. Released at a time when most major media resources were focused on the Vietnam War, co-directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi were among a very, very small group of people documenting the unrest which accompanied the decolonization of Africa. More than 50 years after its release, this is still a brutally graphic film: human death is captured on camera, up-close and unsimulated; hippopotami and elephants are attacked with spears until they resemble living pin-cushions, only expiring after suffering prolonged and agonizing brutality; human remains litter rural fields and city streets like so much discarded waste. There are several scenes where the audio appears to be altered to present the on-screen activity in a manipulated context, which was a technique employed in both MONDO CANE (1962) and MONDO CANE 2 (1963). Charges that the filmmakers were actually complicit in staging some of the death scenes led to a court case in Italy, where they were eventually acquitted. But being critical of a mondo movie for employing deception is like being critical of a baker for employing yeast; it's one of the tools at the creators' disposal. Understanding that the mondo genre in general was more concerned with titilation and shock than in absolute narrative truth will go a long way in explaining why Jacopetti and Prosperi may have…