Next week, Columbus viewers will get the chance to see Selma, a smart and impassioned film about a pivotal moment in America’s Civil Rights Movement.
While they’re waiting, they may want to check out the documentary Concerning Violence, a collection of film footage shot during the 1960s and ’70s. Though it’s set in colonial Africa rather than the United States, the underlying racial inequities are all too similar.
Subtitled Nine Scenes From the Anti-Imperialist Self-Defense, the documentary takes us to various countries that were ruled by European governments or business interests. The vintage footage, shot for Swedish television and compiled by Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson (The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975), offers a diverse look at an era of African upheaval.
Several revolutionaries talk about the lengths they’ve gone to in their fight for freedom—and the lengths their government has gone to in its attempt to suppress them. A smattering of graphic images underscore their words.