Africa addio

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

Quite the conundrum, 80% of the comments focus only on the violence, which is extreme and relentless at times. It should also be noted that the film clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes, and, there is a whole other world being presented when the violence stops. Quite simply, the cinematography will knock your socks off; we're talking major motion picture stuff with an original score that keeps evolving and is quite breathtaking(i still haven't seen this on a big screen but, wow). Speaking of breathtaking, visually this film is a feast for the eyes, it's hard to believe at times that i'm watching a documentary; a documentary that will open you up and get inside you and everyone that sees it, with no pun intended and no shame. As someone else said here, it is 'an uneasy time capsule'. The brutality, perfectly balanced with tender and profound beauty. Real situations balanced with oddity and humor.

I mean, the directors won an Oscar for cinematography just before this and at one part of the film they are a breath away from being executed, only to be saved by an officer who points out that they are Italian. Now in 2009, and every day forward until the end of civilization, this collection of moving pictures becomes more and more potent, gaining credence with every new low that so-called 'modern' humanity sinks to, with the temporal yet exquisite fruits of it's labor always just out of reach of the masses. AN ABSOLUTE MUST SEE

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.

Both terrifying and fascinating are the words that sprang up in my mind as I was watching the movie.

It's fascinating that the record of atrocities made to humans and animals in Africa existed already in the sixties. Just as those atrocities were happening. Today, fifty years later, we are only made aware post festum that something like that was happening and happened, but it is like some distant point in the past. If you think Iraq war in the nineties was the first 'live' feed of (war) terror from the other side of the world, think again. And try to find this movie. The movie maybe is not 'live' feed in the most rigid sense of the word, but it is a contemporary document of something that shouldn't have happened. And, what is worse, is still happening today.

And terrifying? Well, you just have to see the movie.

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.