List of films featuring colonialism
Colonialism in the cinema has been the subject of many books and essays. Stereotyping, distortion, imagistic mistreatment, assimilationism and caricatural visions of colonies have been practiced in this type of cinema. With a few exceptions, such as the film Gandhi, most films have been made with narratives constructed from the point of view of the colonizer nation. During the era of colonialism, many European governments funded film projects which involved their overseas colonies; either for instructional purposes for individuals living in colonies or to support colonialism in general. Although the United States did not engage with colonialism to the same level as European nations, the American westward expansion led to the establishment of the Western genre, which dealt with many colonialist topics; these have been subverted in Revisionist Westerns, which came about during a re-evaluation of the genre in the 1960s.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
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The following is an alphabetical list of films and series that feature or relate to colonialism.
Film | Year | Description |
---|---|---|
Aguirre, the Wrath of God | 1972 | Film by Werner Herzog, based on the Spanish explorer Lope de Aguirre during his 16th century attempts to conquer what is now Peru. |
1999 | ABC Australia-produced documentary about the genocide of Mayan nations in Guatemala. Video. | |
Another Country | 2015 | The documentary examines how a traditional way of life has been disrupted by Australia, and the consequences that has had for the Yolngu people. |
The Battle of Algiers | 1966 | An Italian-Algerian film covering the struggle for decolonization in French Algeria in the context of the Battle of Algiers. |
Baler | 2008 | Set in the late 19th century, this historical fiction is based on the siege of Baler, a colonial Spanish military base by Filipino revolutionaries. |
Beans | 2020 | It explores the 1990 Oka Crisis at Kanesatake a Mohawk settlement in southwestern Quebec, Canada. |
2012 | Film based on the life of Spanish soldier Gonzalo Guerrero and his transition to fight on the side of colonized Mayas. | |
The Birth of a Nation | 1915 | An fictional American film that depicts African Americans in a negative light and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. Despite its controversy and protests by activists, the film was a commercial success. |
The Birth of a Nation | 2016 | Based on the life of Nat Turner, a former slave in America, who leads a liberation movement to free African Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites. |
Black Robe | 1991 | Based on the fictional novel of the same name. Set in the 17th century, it depicts the adventures of a Jesuit missionary tasked with founding a mission in New France. |
The Book of Negroes | 2015 | A Canadian television series based on the book of the same name. The series deals with the experiences of Black Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. |
Burn! | 1969 | An agent provocateur is sent to the fictional island of Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean to replace the Portuguese administration by a formally sovereign state controlled by white latifundists friendly to the British government. To realize this project, the agent persuades the black slaves to fight for their liberation from slavery. |
Cabeza de Vaca | 1991 | Mexican film about the explorations of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in the New World. He was one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition. |
Camp de Thiaroye | 1989 | Senegalese film about the struggle for decolonization in French Senegal depicting the Thiaroye massacre. The film was banned in France for a decade and censored in Senegal as well.[7] |
El Cimarron | 2007 | Based on the life of Marcos Xiorro who conspired and planned a slave revolt in Puerto Rico in 1821 against the Spanish Empire. |
2018 | A documentary about the controversy in America surrounding the life of Christopher Columbus, an Italian official commissioned by the Spanish Crown to find an alternate commercial route to Asia by travelling West. Commentators challenge traditional representations of Christopher Columbus, bringing issues of imperialism, colonialism, racism, greed, religion, and human rights into focus. | |
1992 | A French telefilm about the Valladolid debate in which European authorities debated whether indigenous peoples had a soul. | |
Cry Freedom | 1986 | The film centres on the real-life events involving black activist Steve Biko and his friend Donald Woods. |
Dances with Wolves | 1990 | Fictional story of a Union soldier travelling to the American frontier and his interactions with Native Americans. |
Days of Glory | 2006 | French film about the contribution of colonial French North Africa's soldiers during the Second World War. |
Emitai | 1971 | A 1971 Senegalese drama film directed by Ousmane Sembène set with the Vichy government conscripting men from France's colonies. |
Epitaph | 2015 | On the orders of Hernan Cortés, three Spanish soldiers travel to the Popocatepetl volcano with the task of looking for sulfur necessary for the war. The conquerors will face their fears on the journey in an inhospitable territory. |
2022 | The documentary tells the story of five Sixties Scoop survivors – 4 women and 1 man – all of whom had someone close to them become either missing or murdered. The film points to the inter-generational trauma of colonialism, residential schools, and the Sixties Scoop as forces that connect all of these tragedies Video. | |
Eye for Eye | 1918 | An American drama film set in the colonial Sahara Desert involving a Bedouin woman with a colonial French captain. |
Exterminate All the Brutes | 2021 | The four-part series follows colonization and multiple genocides, and the effect of both, alongside imperialism and white supremacy. Based on the book Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot. |
Farewell to the King | 1989 | A 1989 American fiction adventure drama film starring Nick Nolte in which an American deserter becomes the leader of a head-hunting tribe of Dayaks. |
Fitzcarraldo | 1982 | It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon Basin. The film is derived from the historic events of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald and his real-life feat of transporting a disassembled steamboat over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald. |
The Four Feathers | 1939 | A British film about the story of a British Army private during the Sudan campaign of 1898 in the Mahdist War. |
Ganga Zumba | 1963 | Not released until 1972 because of a military coup in Brazil, this Brazilian film highlights Ganga Zumba, a 17th-century slave revolutionary against the Portuguese Empire. |
Gandhi | 1982 | A biographical film about anti-colonial nationalist and lawyer Mahatma Gandhi's involvement in the Indian independence movement. |
Gold | 2017 | Spanish historical drama film directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes. The film is based on a short story by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and depicts a 16th century Spanish expedition during the Colonization of the Americas aiming at locating El Dorado. It is loosely inspired on expeditions by conquistadors Lope de Aguirre and Nuñez de Balboa. |
Gunga Din | 1939 | This American film is a fictional story about three British Indian Army officers who fight the Thuggee, an Indian cult, in British India. |
Heart of Darkness | 1993 | A film based on the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State by an Ivory trader. |
2006 | South African filmmaker travels to Orania in the Northern Cape, to investigate what it means to be white in the new South Africa. | |
Hidalgo: The story never told | 2010 | A Mexican film about the life of Mexican independence leader Miguel Hidalgo. |
Hostiles | 2017 | An American revisionist Western film about a story between a US army official and a few members of indigenous peoples within North America. |
How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman | 1971 | A fictional story set in 16th century Brazil where rival French and Portuguese settlers are utilizing the indigenous people as allies in their struggle to establish control. |
2011 | At the end of the XIX century, four groups of indigenous people (a total of 25 people, from infants to the elderly) were taken from Chile by a German businessman and were shown as animals in different fairs and public exhibitions in several Europeans cities. | |
In My Country | 2004 | The film is centred around the story of Afrikaner poet Anna Malan and an American journalist sent to South Africa to report about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. |
Indian Horse | 2017 | The film centres on Saul Indian Horse, a young Canadian First Nations boy who survives the Canada's Indian residential school system to become a star ice hockey player.[8][9][10] |
Kalushi | 2016 | A story based on true events about Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, a nineteen-year-old that goes into self-exile following the 1976 Soweto uprisings to join the liberation movement. |
Khartoum | 1966 | The film is based on historical accounts of Gordon's defence of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army, during the 1884–1885 Siege of Khartoum.[11] |
The Kitchen Toto | 1988 | In Kenya in 1950, a British policeman takes a murdered black priest's son to live with him at his home as a houseboy. |
Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee | 1994 | The film is based on Mary Crow Dog's autobiography Lakota Woman, wherein she accounts her involvement with the American Indian Movement and relationship with Lakota medicine man and activist Leonard Crow Dog. |
Lion of the Desert | 1981 | Historical epic war film about the Second Italo-Senussi War, starring Anthony Quinn as Libyan tribal leader Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin leader fighting the Regio Esercito (Italian Royal Army) and Oliver Reed as Italian General Rodolfo Graziani, who attempted to defeat Mukhtar. |
La Llorona | 2019 | Former Guatemalan dictator and military general Enrique Monteverde (based on Efraín Ríos Montt) is convicted for directing the genocide of native Mayans in 1982–83. He is terrorized by ghosts from the past and present, and becomes ill. |
The Last of the Mohicans | 1920 | An American film adapted from James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 fictional novel of the same name. |
Last Stand in the Philippines | 1945 | Spanish biographical war film directed by Antonio Román. |
The Last Supper | 1976 | A colonial plantation owner during Spanish colonial times recreates the last supper using slaves, in order to teach them about Christianity. |
Latin History for Morons | 2018 | In this one-man Netflix show, John Leguizamo finds humor and heartbreak as he traces 3,000 years of Latin history in an effort to help his bullied son. |
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer | 1935 | An American film about a group of British cavalrymen trying to defend their stronghold and headquarters at Bengal against Indian rebels during the period of the British colonial rule in India. |
Lumumba | 2000 | Biographical film directed by Raoul Peck. The film depicts the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba, and is set in the months before and after Congo-Léopoldville achieved independence from Belgium in June 1960. |
2019 | Documentary about the story of an indigenous woman called Malintzin or La Malinche, who was the translator (and diplomat) of Hernán Cortés back in 1519 when his warriors started the project to conquer Tenochtitlan. | |
Manganinnie | 1980 | An Australian film set in the Black War of 1830 in Van Diemen's Land. Manganinnie, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, survives a raid and searches for her tribe with the company of a lost white girl. |
The Mission | 1986 | Based on events surrounding the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, in which Spain ceded part of Jesuit Paraguay to Portugal. |
Mister Johnson | 1990 | A Nigerian who works as a clerk for the British civil service and adopts the style of the British colonialists in the belief that he is a true Englishman. |
2005 | In 1904–1908, three quarters of the Herero nation and half of the Namaqua nation of the German colony of Namibia were killed in the Herero and Namaqua genocide, many in concentration camps. This BBC film tells this forgotten story and its links to German racial "theories". | |
Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation | 2007 | An epic film on the Namibian independence struggle against South African occupation as seen through the life of Sam Nujoma, the leader of the South West Africa People's Organisation and the first president of the Republic of Namibia. |
The Nightingale | 2018 | An Australian film set in 1825 in the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania), depicting the story of an Irish woman trying to avenge her husband during the Black War. |
Once Upon a Time... The Americas | 1991 | A French animated TV series directed by Albert Barillé. An episode on the Spanish Golden Age was censored in Spain. |
The Other Conquest | 2000 | The film is a drama about the aftermath of the 1520s Spanish Conquest of Mexico told from the perspective of the indigenous Aztec people. It explores the social, religious, and economic changes brought about by a historical process of colonization that both defined the American continent. |
2016 | A film based on An Outpost of Progress by Joseph Conrad based upon his experiences in the Congo. | |
Quilombo | 1984 | Account of Quilombo dos Palmares, a 17th-century Brazilian community of escaped slaves within the Portuguese Empire. Features its one-time leader, Zumbi. |
Rabbit-Proof Fence | 2002 | Award-winning film that illustrates the official child removal policy that existed in Australia between 1905 and 1967. Its victims now are called the "Stolen Generations". |
Reel Bad Arabs | 2006 | A documentary film based on the book of the same name by Jack Shaheen, which also analyzes how Hollywood misrepresents the image of Arabs. The documentary analyzes 1,000 films that have Arab and Muslim characters, produced between 1896 and 2000. |
The Revenant | 2015 | A member of an American frontier fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival in North America, while trying to avenge his indigenous family. |
River Queen | 2005 | The film takes place in New Zealand in 1868 during Titokowaru's War phase of the New Zealand Wars between the Māori and New Zealand colonial forces. |
Romero | 1989 | A biographical film depicting the story of Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, who organized peaceful protests against the violent military regime. |
Sambizanga | 1972 | A film about the colonial liberation movement in Angola against the Portuguese Empire. |
Sanders of the River | 1935 | A British film set in Colonial Nigeria depicting the experience of a district officer. |
The Searchers | 1956 | An American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, set during the Texas–Indian wars, and starring John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his niece abducted by Comanches. |
The Secret Country: The First Australians Fight Back | 1985 | It details the persecution of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders throughout Australia's history.[12] Video |
Something of Value | 1957 | It shows the colonial and native African conflict caused by colonialism and differing views on how life should be lived. It stars Rock Hudson as the colonial and Sidney Poitier as the native Kenyan. The two men grew up together but have drifted apart at maturity. |
The Sons of the Great Bear | 1966 | A German revisionist Western film that turned the traditional American "Cowboy and Indian" conventions on their head, casting the Native Americans as the heroes and the American Army as the villains. |
Toussaint Louverture | 2012 | French historical film based on the life of Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian emancipation revolution against French colonial rule. |
Utopia | 2013 | Documentary film written, produced and presented by John Pilger and directed by Pilger and Alan Lowery, that explores the experiences of Aboriginal Australians in modern Australia.[13][14] The title is derived from the Aboriginal homeland community of Utopia, Northern Territory. Video |
Tula: The Revolt | 2013 | In 1795 on Curaçao, then a Dutch colony, a slave uprising takes place.[15] |
Utu | 1983 | Partly inspired by events from Te Kooti's War, the film tells of a Māori soldier setting out to get utu, or vengeance, on his former allies after the British army destroys his home village. The film is set in the 1870s. |
Viceroy's House | 2017 | A film about Lord Mountbatten and his involvement in the partition of India. |
We Were Children | 1992 | A 2012 Canadian documentary film about the experiences of First Nations children in the Canadian Indian residential school system. |
Where the Spirit Lives | 1989 | A 1989 television film about Aboriginal children in Canada being taken from their tribes to attend residential schools for assimilation into mainstream culture. |
White Sun of the Desert | 1970 | A Russian 1970 'Eastern' or Ostern fictional film of the Soviet Union. |
Zama | 2017 | An Argentinian film set in the late 18th century in a remote South American colony under the Spanish Empire, and portrays the period's "naturalness of slavery".[16] |
Zulu | 1964 | A 1964 British epic war film depicting the Battle of Rorke's Drift between the British Army and the Zulus in January 1879. |
Zulu Dawn | 1979 | A 1979 British epic war film depicting the Battle of Isandlwana between the British Army and the Zulus in January 1879. |
See also[]
- Colonial cinema
- List of films that depict class struggle
- List of films featuring slavery
- List of racism-related films
References[]
- ^ Stam, R. (1998). "Colonialism, Racism, and Representation" (with Louise Spence), in the Fifth Edition of Braudy and Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 1998).
- ^ Retrieved February 25, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/colonialism-movies
- ^ Slavin, David Henry. (2001) Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919-1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 300 pp. ISBN 0-8018-6616-2.
- ^ "Colonialism on film: How cinema finds new ways to bust an old Tabu". TheGuardian.com. 26 March 2013.
- ^ Rice, Tom. "British Empire's forgotten propaganda tool for 'primitive peoples': mobile cinema". The Conversation.
- ^ "An ugly truth: Is cinema finally facing up to Britain's colonial past?". TheGuardian.com. 29 November 2019.
- ^ Haque, Nicolas (12 November 2013). "A little-known massacre in Senegal". Al-Jazeera. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
- ^ Peebles, Frank (February 2, 2017). "Indian Horse head to screen with local talent". Prince George Citizen. Glacier Media. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
- ^ "About the Film". Indian Horse. Retrieved 25 March 2019.
- ^ De Vore, Alex (February 19, 2019). "'Indian Horse' Review". Santa Fe Reporter. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
- ^ Duiker and Spielvogel, 2015, p. 621
- ^ ""8 July 2014, 9pm The Secret Country shown on NITV"". Respect & Listen. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
- ^ Utopia (2013) at IMDb
- ^ John Pilger on breaking the Great Silence of Australia's past. The Irish Times, Donald Clarke, 15 November 2013. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
- ^ Samuel, Allison (March 15, 2013). "How 2013 Became the Year of the Slavery Film". The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
- ^ Koza, Roger (September 24, 2017). "El arte de la espera: esta semana se estrena "Zama", de Lucrecia Martel". La Voz del Interior (in Spanish). Retrieved November 19, 2017.
Further Reading & Bibliography[]
- Baldwin, James. 1976. The Devil finds work: an essay.
- Cowans, Jon. (2018) Film and Colonialism in the Sixties: The Anti-Colonialist Turn in the US, Britain, and France Publisher: Routledge. 292 pp. ISBN 0429665024, 9780429665028.
- Cowans, Jon. (2015) Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism, 1946—1959 Johns Hopkins University Press. Project MUSE, ISBN 9781421416410
- Limbrick, P.. (2010) Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand Author P. Publisher: Springer. 272 pp. ISBN 0230107915, 9780230107915
- Alford, Matthew; Secker, Tom (27 June 2017). National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood. CreateSpace. ISBN 978-1548084981.
- Rice, Tom. (2019) Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire, Oakland, University of California Press. 360pp. ISBN 9780520300392
- Shaheen, Jack G. (2012). Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Revised and updated ed.). New York: Olive Branch Press, Interlink Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-623-71006-4. OCLC 928572276. – originally published in 2001
- Slavin, David Henry. (2001) Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919-1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 300 pp. ISBN 0-8018-6616-2.
- Stam, R. (1998). Colonialism, Racism, and Representation (with Louise Spence), in the Fifth Edition of Braudy and Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 1998).
- Lists of films
- Colonialism in popular culture
- Lists of films by common content
- Lists of films by topic
- Films by topic