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What an impressive propaganda technique. That's my one-line review to the "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat", and I mean it most sincerely. I really am impressed.
This quote from a New York Times film critic serves both as a quick plot summary and as the main impression the film conveys:
Let's focus on the "well-researched" part, the part that lends the film a documentary gravitas, the propaganda technique I so admire.
The documentary is a collage of footage, archival audio and video clips, and quotes with careful citations that briefly appear on screen. It doesn't have a narrator--except occasionally it does, like from 22:56 to 24:19, where English text quoting In Koli Jean Bofane's Congo.Inc overlays archival footage while the said author reads his work in original French:
Here's the beauty: "Congo Inc." is a work of fiction. It is a novel. It is not, and never claimed to be, an accurate and contextualized account of history, nor is it subject to the kind of critique for accuracy that a work of non-fiction would receive.
The technique allows the film to convey the impression of historical gravitas while absolving it of any responsibility for truth, accuracy, or context. What is there to criticize? All the film does is feature a Belgian writer connected to Congo by birth and some years of residence, reading from his work. It's a work of fiction--so what, when the main theme of the film is to suggest the interweaving of art and politics. The film's omission of the category of the work is completely in line with their omission of such information about their other sources. Surely the film has done its due diligence by accurately citing the sources, thus providing any interested viewer with the requisite information to establish the necessary level of epistemology for the content of any citation it happens to feature. If anything, it's a mark of respect for the sophistication of the viewer that the film doesn't bother contextualizing these works, since surely the viewer is quite familiar with both the history of Sub-Saharan Africa in general, and prominent literary works of authors with Sub-Saharan African ties in particular.
Yes, its Sundance Festival Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation is well-deserved. I look forward to future adaptations of this technique, where documentaries about the CIA quote John Grisham's novels, and documentaries about the Catholic Church quote "The Da Vinci Code".
So what's the problem? Where is the historical inaccuracy? Yes, it's a work of fiction, but works of fiction are often based on real historical facts. The producers probably included it because it elucidates their point better than some dry as dust historical tract about how raw materials from The Congo were often used to produce military equipment. They didn't alert you that it was a work of fiction, but is this really necessary? If a documentary about WWI were done in the same style but quoted "For Whom the Bell Tolls" instead, would you insist that they flash "Work of Fiction" in yellow Impact font on the screen just to remove any ambiguity? And who are they supposed to be propagandizing, anyway? You can't stream it without paying extra, unless you have Kanopy, which most people technically have access to for free but don't know about and probably wouldn't be interested in. I'd be more concerned about historical movies that clean up the plot for narrative convenience and leave the viewer with an incorrect impression. These aren't even trying to pretend to be documentaries, but the fictionalized movie version ends up being cultural canon.
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