Concerning Violence

Goran Olsson's 2014 Swedish documentary combines passages from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth with Swedish television's African archive from the sixties and seventies. The text appears on screen as writing and is read by Lauryn Hill. The archive is the documentary's strength. Swedish journalists filmed in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe and Liberia in the last years of colonial rule, and most of that footage had not been used before. What white plantation owners say on camera acquires a different meaning placed beside Fanon's text. The premise is contested: Fanon's argument about the necessity of violence against colonialism remains a divisive text. Olsson does not soften it and keeps the context limited; the preface was written by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Who it's for: those interested in the history of colonialism and archive-based essay films. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a balanced historical assessment; the film carries the argument of one text and contains footage of violence.