Tambay A. Obenson, Indiewire
After
attempting to contextualize the Black Power Movement, in a format more
accessible to a new generation - what we call a "mixtape" hence the
title, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 - Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson
will continue on that same path, in a similar style, with his next film,
revealed over the weekend.
Olsson will
incorporate the words from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth in a new
documentary project that will also use newly-discovered archive footage (as was
the case with his last film), to explore what he refers to as "the most
daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, illuminating
the neocolonialism happening today, as well as the unrest and the reaction
against it."
To be titled
Concerning Violence, and produced by Annika Rogell and Tobias Janson for Story
AB, the project is one of three feature films selected for support by the
Swedish Film Institute, with close to $1 million in production funding.
No word on
how exactly Fanon's work will be incorporated into the film, but it's worth
noting that, for those unfamiliar with his writings, in short, the author's two
critically significant works - Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and the aforementioned
Wretched of the Earth (1961) - both read like manifestos presenting a utopian
vision of a better world where the colonized frees himself/herself and becomes
independent of the colonizer, both physically, and mentally.
Fanon’s
theories were influential during those years, especially on Third Cinema right
from its launch in the 1960s, a time of anti-colonial, revolutionary struggles
in the so-called Third World, and rising political movements against the
dominance of Western countries; Third Cinema being a film movement that was
formed to address the need for a new kind of cinema that critiqued
neocolonialism, Western imperialism and capitalism. An anti-oppression stance
that challenged the status quo of political and social power around the world that
left the Third World (a term I've always taken issue with) at a disadvantage.
So Fanon's
work certainly fits into the discussion that director Olsson seems to want to
have in his next film.
No ETA yet
on when it can be expected, but now that we're aware of it, we'll be watching
its progress.
His last
film, which comes recommended, The Black Power Mixtape, is streaming on Netflix
right now.
