USA-SOUTH SUDAN/FILM Hubert Sauper's latest film exposes modern colonialism through South Sudan

Record ID: 143842

  • Title: USA-SOUTH SUDAN/FILM Hubert Sauper's latest film exposes modern colonialism through South Sudan
  • Date: 15th August 2015
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 14, 2015) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) HUBERT SAUPER, FILMMAKER, SAYING: "You know, 'We Come As Friends' is the title of the film, but it is an ironic title. 'We come as friends' is probably the most consequential lie of our civilization. It's the first line that explorers would have said to the Congolese when they got ther
  • Embargoed: 30th August 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVABXFBR0M4OZ2YHANLUKLV3EE9G
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: It took Austrian documentary filmmaker Hubert Sauper six years to create his latest film largely set in Africa's newest nation, South Sudan.
    The poverty, injustice and exploitation that Sauper encounters is packed into a two hour-long visual journey that he documented while flying around in a tiny, self-built plane travelling from remote village to village. The divide of the continent's largest country into two nations, an old "civilizing" ideology re-emerges, one of colonialism and a clash of empires.
    Fittingly, the film's title is "We Come as Friends."
    "It is an ironic title. 'We Come as Friends' is probably the most consequential lie of our civilization. It's the first line that explorers would have said to the Congolese when they got there, or to the Incas or the Aztecs 500 years ago," Sauper, whose previous film "Darwin's Nightmare" got an Oscar nod, told Reuters on Friday (August 14).
    With the formation of South Sudan, the world's two superpowers could go head to head, Sauper explained.
    "To make a long story a bit short and to make a caricature, into the hemisphere of Sudan the North, which was more under Chinese influence, and the hemisphere of the South, which was more under Texan influence I would say. The President of the South Sudan wears a cowboy hat which was gift from George W. Bush, and that means in itself quite a lot, I think. He never takes his hat off anymore. "
    The mantra of the film according to Sauper is a quote by Mark Twain: "'History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
    While the new superpowers China and the United States are not the slave traders of 15th century Europe, the narrative has stayed the same.
    "We are representing the light and moral standards, the superiority, the technically evolved, etcetera. And we have to bring those people up, which is a terrifying demon from colonialism. And we carry this, and the point I made in my film, 'We Come as Friends' is that this demon of thinking is inside of people's DNA."
    The heartbreaking irony is ever present in the film. At new schools that teach native children how to write and read they also get bullied for wearing traditional garments instead of school uniforms.
    A Christian missionary from the United States pushes solar-powered bible readers on villagers.
    'We Come as Friends' has an underlying message. That we come as friends, but we have a reason to want to be your friend, because we want your oil, we want your resources and we want to do trade," Sauper explained.
    "And of course from our point of view, from the West in this colonial legacy, we bring civilization, we bring light, we bring industrialization, what we call progress. And the progress that we have a consensus about is not always progress for what you find on the field to my point of view."
    Sauper said it is not his intention to unveil the injustice inflicted upon Africa through the film but rather make viewers think about themselves and their own "colonial" predisposition. Does Africa really need our schools? Do Sudanese children really need socks?
    "It's more about figuring out, it's a psychoanalysis for our own thinking," he explained.
    "We Come as Friends" won the Special Jury Prize for 'Cinematic Bravery' at the Sundance Film Festival last year. It opens in theaters across the U.S. in August.
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