DOCUMENTARY, US, 2006, 108 minutes
Director/Producer/Writer: Pippa Scott
Co-Director: Oreet Rees
Co-Producer: Glory Friend
Voice-overs: Don Cheadle, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell
Pippa Scott in attendance
With its glorious array of natural resources – ivory, rubber, uranium – Congo should have been the wealthiest country in Africa. Instead its people have suffered slavery, torture, and genocide, first at the hands of Belgium’s 19th-century King Leopold, who looted the country and murdered millions of its people. This imperialist horror story continued throughout the 20th century. During the Cold war, the CIA was instrumental in the coup that brought the military thug Mobuto to power. Mobuto turned Leopold’s policies on his own people in the name of anti-Communism. Director Pippa Scott, well known for her role as the older daughter in John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS, isn’t shy about naming racism as the reason Europe and the United States felt free to participate in unlimited, appalling economic exploitation. She tells this atrocious history through archival photographs and film clips, and with the help of voice-overs by actors Don Cheadle, Alfre Woodard, and James Cromwell. (Amy Taubin)