'This history connects to people's lives now in a very direct way'
đ A conversation with film director Rob Lemkin.
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Analysis and global perspectives in health, development, planet.
The colonial past is alive in the present.
Located in the heart of the Sahel, in West Africa, Niger is one of the worldâs poorest countries. Almost half of its population was living in extreme poverty in 2021.
What does the story of Paul Voulet, a captain in the French army of a century ago, have to do with it?
The link becomes painfully clear when you watch African Apocalypse. The film follows British-Nigerian student Femi Nylander as he discovers how Vouletâs barbaric conquest of Niger in 1898 still reverberates today. Nylanderâs journey along the captainâs path slowly uncovers a brutal colonial legacy that lives on in communities marked by it.
In this conversation with Rob Lemkin, the filmâs director, we learn how the process of making the film uncovered this dark chapter in Nigerâs history and Europeâs colonial pastâand how itâs paving the way for Nigeriens to work through ongoing anger and trauma.
I spoke with Lemkin as part of a series of conversations that get behind the scenes of some of the filmmaking featured in the 2021 edition of the Global Health Film festival. You can watch the full interview hereâwhat follows is an excerpt, edited for brevity and clarity.
AM: What is the film about, briefly?
RL: African apocalypse is a film that shows the journey of a young man from Britain, [Femi Nylander], who becomes interested in the history of colonialism. His parents are Nigerian, although he was born and brought up in England. And it seems to be a big elephant in the room of his life. We decided to make a film together. So Femi travels to West Africaâto Niger, because that connects very strangely with a famous book about colonialism called Heart of Darkness.
Niger was colonised by the French. He [Femi] travelled following in the footsteps of a Frenchman [Paul Voulet] who had conquered the country at exactly the same time that Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad had been written. This person who conquered the country pretty much burned every village and killed everybody that came up against him. That was the story of how the French government took control of this part of Africa. So the journey follows the story across Niger and essentially, what Femi finds is that actually, people rememberâit's a kind of living history of this terrible time.
What's a little surprising at firstâwhich by the end of the film, you no longer find surprisingâis how the emotions around this history are still quite raw. Not only in the elderly men that we meet, but young people too.
I was quite shocked by how when we got to the last place [on the journey], the anger and the real resentment was much greater than I had anticipated. One of the things at work was that, actually, the process of this film involved lots of different communities across the country. But people were in touch with each other, and we were all in touch with them. It kind of brought out a sense of history, and a sense of âactually, this is really the beginning of our present-day experienceâ.
Niger is a very poor country. And [people] see the lack of development, and they see [that the] situation has been connected to the moment that this Frenchman with his force came to their townâthat is actually the moment an outside force came to control their area. So I think the feeling is that actually, this history of 120 years ago, connects to people's lives now in a very direct way.
I did see how villagers made that link between today's poverty and the trauma of what Voulet did. And I think you also talk about uranium extraction that is ongoing, and supplied to France tax-free, while workers have no protection and there's not much in terms of domestic electricity supply. Perhaps that's what you were referring to when you said that the film brought the connections a little bit more onto the surface?
Yes, that's right. In terms of the uranium, it has been tax-free in the past, until around 2014. Niger was paid less than other sources of uranium. And it is the case that Niger is one of the least electrified countries in the world. And yet, the company that produces the uranium, if you look on their website, they take great credit for France's energy independence. And of course, energy security is now one of the main things that everybody is thinking about, because of the situation with Russia and Ukraine. So when we put that all into a wider context, the reality is that the energy security that a country like France is able to achieve now is achieved at great cost to the people who live in the country in Africa where the material comes from.
So, it's a particularly inconvenient moment for the message of the film. Have you seen any sort of resistance to it?
What's happened to Europe [on] February the 24th is very recent. The film has been showing in film festivals, on television and in various events. In America, the Ukrainian connection was made in discussions that we had, but not so much really in relation to resistance. Maybe it was because we were showing it at universities where there's possibly already a critical reflection on American foreign policy.
As we speak, we have the French presidential election coming up. The issue of colonialism and how it is handled in France at the moment is something that has more or less been put to rest. But it may well return in the future or if he [Macron] wins, because in the past he has made quite a lot of remarks and promises about trying to improve and open up France's connection with its colonial history. I should say, of course: we're not trying to point our finger at Franceâall [that is] said about France in relation to the film could really be said about Britain. It just so happens that we followed this story in this film.
Another idea that grabbed me watching the film was Femiâs reflections on how Africans are generally silent in stories about their continent. And I wondered if that was something you wanted to explore going into the project or if it emerged in the course of his journey.
It emerged in the course of the process of making the film. It started off as a sort of semi-fictional film that was an adaptation of a book called Exterminate all the Brutes. It was a story of somebody travelling by bus across the desert, and ruminating on colonial history, philosophy and mentality, scientific racism, and so on. It was that book that took me to the first research trip to Niger. And I became increasingly frustrated by the way the person [in that book] didn't speak to anyone. Whereas when I went to Niger, I found connections with different communities, and how they connected to the particular episodes of their encounters with this Paul Voulet characterâand because their encounters were all quite different, but also very vivid, they all added up to the same sense of what colonial conquest really means. So the film moved from being a little bit like the original Joseph Conrad bookâ[it] has no African speaking apart from one or two wordsâ[to] this film that became a people's history. As I became involved with Femi, we proceeded together for the second part [of the filmmaking process].
In terms of practicalities of making the film, how was that? You hinted a couple of times that it wasn't necessarily straightforward.
No. I first went with a small camera and an assistant and from time to time, we would have some police just sort of keep an eye on us. Some of that material that I filmed during the research period actually has ended up in the film. But when it came to making the journey with Femi, everybody in every town was prepared for us to come. For all the different period places along the road, we always had to have government permission, local government permission, traditional rulersâ permission. And it was basically mandated by the government that we have a full time, small detachment of military security to make sure that we would have protection.
You don't see anything in the film, but there were events going on around the shooting. One place that we filmed in, [it] was probably only about four or five days after a terrible attack there; many people were killed in the marketplace. There are certain parts of Niger which are connected to the story of Paul Voulet, which are to the north of the capital city, going closer to the border with Maliâwe weren't able to tell those parts of that story because those areas really are too dangerous. So we had to cut our cloth accordingly.
Bring us a little bit up to date as to what's happening now.
The film is being shown at film festivals and in different television stations around the world and so on. But I think the most exciting thing about it is that it was translated into Hausa, the language that most people are speaking in Niger. It was translated by a company called Arewa24, which is based in Kano, in northern Nigeria. The television station did this fantastic job, with great actors, really bringing the film to life. It was released on television, in Niger, just at the end of February. It has been showing every Sunday evening at nine o'clock. Millions of people have seen it. When we went to [the capital] Niamey we did about eight screenings at a big cinema there, which was like a VIP screening with ministers of the government. And then we were showing it in schools [and] in art centres.
The atmosphere, the response of the audiences was extremely dynamic, active and passionate. Especially with young people. Niger is a place where women would tend not to speak in public spacesâbut young women, young girls, somehow find themselves very outspoken on this subject. That's quite an interesting process. Our aim is to take the film back one more time. And then this time to take it across the country, to all the different towns and villages and communities that worked with us. In terms of being something that makes colonial accountability and colonial transitional justice more realâand reparations, in some shape or form, perhaps more tangibleâI think that this film is playing a part in that in relation to Niger.
đĽ Find out more about African Apocalypse
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Briefing Highlights
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