Africa opens prestigious documentary festival in Amsterdam

The 24th edition of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) opened Wednesday November 16th with a film about Africa: The Ambassador by Danish filmmaker and journalist Mads Brügger. This is the most important festival dedicated to documentaries in the world.
It is disappointing to notice one more time that such festivals don’t open with films from Africa but about it. Anyway it is still somehow an African presence that otherwise would not be possible.
Already a polemic is going around the film. One of the protagonists, the Dutch businessman Willem Tijssen, asked the festival (via letter) to withdraw the film from its program. The Ambassador remains however the opening film of the festival, the press officer confirmed in a press release..
Tijssen is running a company called Diplomatic Services Africa and helped the filmmaker to get a Liberian passport and got paid for that service a modicum sum of 50.000 US dollar. 3/4th of the amount was used to corrupt African officers, admitted the man.
The journalist went to explore the milieu of diamond traffic in Central African Republic. This is one of the most mysterious businesses in the world to which it will be impossible for an African filmmaker to enter.
To do this it is not enough to find diamonds. The most difficult is to be able to take them out of the country. Or the only safe way is to be a diplomat. Then you are sure not to be searched by customers when you are leaving the territory with few diamonds in your Samsonite hand suitcase.
Because it is not possible to be a western diplomat the journalist, a blond and tall Danish man, enters the central African territories as a Liberian official. After some adventures and dealings he establishes his business.
The whole process is filmed by a minuscule hidden camera. That’s how we enter a world of corrupted officials in the high spheres of euro-African diplomacy.
We learn for example that after the fight about the control of minerals in the 70ies, France and China are nowadays working together to spoil African soil.
We learn how French secret services were involved in the provocation of central African rebellion.
We are told that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian president and her minister of foreign affairs were in a black list of persons not allowed to hold any high official position because of their involvement in the civil war.
We are taught how European diplomats are a corrupted network serving as intermediaries in the illegal commerce of diamond. They bring you in touch with officials who will provide the false diplomatic passport, and with the local officials who will help you infiltrate the market of whatever you want.
At the end we will come to the conclusion that the big white people are earning hundreds of millions of dollars using the mines and the work of the poor and short height pygmies.
The filmmaker shows himself always standing with his two locals whom he took as assistants. Therefore he visualizes the relationship of power and spoliation that weighs too much on Africans.
This documentary is part of a whole tradition of successful films about Africa. The same festival opened in 2008 with a film about Congo called Enjoy Poverty by Dutch video-maker Renzo Martins who explored the insane networks of foreign organizations working in this country.
Couple of years earlier, Austrian filmmaker investigated the business of Nile perch fish in the Tanzanian’s Lake Victoria and the impact of hyper-production on the life of.
All these films got big success. This brings back the eternal question about what prevents African filmmakers to be on such stages.
Is it an African destiny to be always something to talk about never something that talks?
Still it is not always obvious that an African filmmaker will talk about his/her continent better than a non African. Production circumstances can be so heavy that Africans can be less free than a European filmmaker for instance.
An African filmmaker would never be able to do what the Danish did. Not only because it is a huge financial operation, but also because an African diplomat who is blond is so unexpected situation that is the most eloquent one to show how African context is absurd.
In this festival there are few African participations like Tahrir 2011 by Egyptian trio Amr Salama, Ayten Amin and Tamer Ezzat who tell the story of the Egyptian uprising.
Very acclaimed Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sene Absa will be also presenting his new documentary Yoole, the sacrifice in the Slide Show parallel section. The filmmakers addresses the tragedy of young Senegalese migrants challenging the death in the Atlantic ocean because of their dream of a better life.

See also : http://www.africareview.com/Arts+and+Culture/A+telling+story+from+Africa+screens+at+Amsterdam+fete/-/979194/1273330/-/taw6h8z/-/index.html