The difficult heritage of Africa’s colonial past

Halfway through the festival there will be a symposium with German and African experts in politics and film discussing how the colonial past still exerts its influence today, how it helps retain existing oppression and how this affects the social reality of Africans today.

The colonial past does still have an effect on African countries, most of which only gained their formal independence in the 60s. The former colonial powers still exert influence on the present political and economic development of African states, but also new players such as the USA or China stake out their claims on the continent. Their influence ranges from direct or indirect political and military interventions to imposing conditions on development aid, grants and trade contracts. Thus neocolonial structures are being continued or even newly recreated.

It is these consequences of colonisation and postcolonial oppression which are often accompanied by heavy conflicts in their respective societies that African and European filmmakers reflect upon in their films. On top of that more and more “homemade“ problems such as corruption or tyranny, accepted traditions and ecological problems become topics of their films.

The filmmakers present the consequences of this oppression in their films in very different ways. Thus a truly African cinema has developed which was nevertheless dominated by a dependency on funding from Western countries right from the beginning. These conditions of production have to be taken in account when one is judging the films since the filmmaker’s work is very often also determined by censorship and the lack of funds.

The symposium is held in cooperation
umdenken Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Hamburg e.V. (www.umdenken-boell.de). Funded by means of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg.