LIST OF FILMS & DOCUMENTARIES
Sauvages, in the heart of human zoos (2018)
Director: Pascal Blanchard, Bruno Victor-Pujebet
Length: 90 min
Genre: Documentary
Country: France
For more than a century, from 1810 to 1940, men have exhibited other men as savages or monsters. More than one and a half billion visitors have come to see 35,000 exhibits around the world. Their names are Petite Capeline, a Fuegian from Patagonia, Tambo, an Australian aborigine, Moliko, a Kalina from Guyana, Ota Benga, a Pygmy from Congo, Jean Thiam, a Wolof from Senegal, and Marius Kaloïe, a Kanak from New Caledonia. Based on archives and never-before-seen images of the history of "human zoos", this film retraces their journey as exhibits in their historical context: the emergence, development and end of the great colonial empires.
Black music. From iron chains to gold chains (2008)
Director: Marc-Aurèle Vecchione
Length: 100 min
Genre: Documentary
Country: France
An audio and filmed history of the role of music in the emancipation of African-Americans.
Bitter Tropics (2006)
Director: Jean-Claude Barny, Myriam Cottias, Virginie Brac
Length: 6x52 min
Genre: Documentary series
Country: France
Distribution: Fatou N'Diaye, Jean-Michel Martial, Jean-Claude Adelin
Samuel L Jackson's intense and personal journey sheds new light on 400 years of human trafficking, when millions of enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas.
Slave routes (2018)
Director: Daniel Cattier, Juan Gélas, Fanny Glissant
Length: 4x52 min
Genre: Documentary series
Country: France
It is the story of a world where the trade of enslaved people has drawn its own territories and borders. A world where violence, domination and profit imposed their routes. The history of slavery did not begin in the cotton fields. It is a much older tragedy that has been played out since the dawn of humanity. From the 7th century onwards, and for more than 1,200 years, Africa was the epicentre of a gigantic trade in human beings that spanned the entire globe. Nubians, Fulani, Mandinka, Songhai, Sosos, Akans, Yoruba, Ibos, Kongos, Yao, Somalis... In total, more than 20 million Africans were deported, sold and enslaved. This criminal system enriched and laid the foundations of the largest empires in the world. The scale of this traffic is such that it has long been impossible to explain all its mechanisms. Yet its history raises a fundamental question: how did Africa end up at the heart of the slave trade?
Enslaved (2020)
Director: Simcha Jacobovici, Yaron Niski
Length: 7x52 min
Genre: Documentary series
Country: Canada, United Kingdom
This documentary serie deals with many and various aspects of the history of enslavement in the United-States of America.
Sankofa (1995)
Director: Haile Gerima
Length: 125 min
Genre: Historical drama
Country: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia , Ghana, United States, Germany, United Kingdom
Distribution: Oyafunmike Ogunlano, Mutabaruka, Alexandra Duah, Nick Medley
Mona, a contemporary African-American model, travels to Cape Coast, Ghana, to a former trading post for a photo shoot. She finds herself possessed by spirits and transported to an 18th century colonial plantation and confronted with the extreme violence that befell her ancestors.
Toussaint Louverture (2012)
Director: Philippe Niang
Length: 2×90 min
Genre: Historical drama mini-series
Country: France
Distribution: Jimmy Jean-Louis ; Aïssa Maïga ; Sonia Rolland
A mini-series focusing on the story of Toussaint Louverture, an enslaved and emancipated person who became one of the main figures of the Haitian Revolution.
12 Years A Slave (2013)
Director: Steve McQueen
Length: 133 min
Genre: Historical drama
Country: United States
Distibution: Chiwetel Ejiofor ; Michael Fassbender ; Lupita Nyong'o
The film tells the story of Solomon Northup, an African-American man who was born free but was captured and enslaved in the slave-owning South of the United States.
Quilombo (1984)
Director: Carlos Diegues
Length: 110 min
Genre: Historical drama
Country: Brazil
Distribution: Antônio Pompêo, Zézé Motta, Tony Tornado
The film tells the story of a rebellion of enslaved people who in the mid-17th century flee a plantation to join the Quilombo do Palmares, a nation of Maroons resisting colonialism.
Django Unchained (2013)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Length: 165 min
Genre: Western
Country: United States
Distribution: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo Di Caprio
A dive into the violent world of the Old South. Two years before the Civil War, a former enslaved man named Django joins forces with a German bounty hunter who has freed him. He agrees to track down wanted criminals with him. In exchange, he will help him find his long-lost wife, who was also enslaved.
Passage du Milieu (2000)
Director: Guy Deslauriers
Length: 78 min
Genre: Historical drama
Country: France
Distribution: Maka Kotto, Djimon Hounsou
An exceptional film in terms of its subject matter as it focuses on the "Middle Passage", the deportation by sea of enslaved Africans to the Americas. A raw film that does not hide any horror and that highlights the heroism of the captives' resistance.
Amistad (1998)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Length: 148 min
Genre: Historical Drama
Country: United States
Distribution: Djimon Hounsou, Morgan Freeman, David Paymer
The film focuses on the story of African captives deported by a Spanish ship to the Americas. Taking advantage of a storm, the captives mutiny but need the captain to find their homeland. He betrays them and once in the Americas, he has them arrested. But it is 1839 and the abolitionist movement is gaining momentum. The rebels find two lawyers to defend their struggle against injustice.
Zarafa (2012)
Director: Rémy Bezancon, Jean-Christophe Lie
Length: 78 min
Genre: Animation
Country: France, Belgium
The cartoon tells the story of a friendship between a young boy in slavery and a giraffe, loosely based on the giraffe that the Egyptian Khedive Mehemet Ali gave to the French King Charles X in 1827.
Benito Cereno (1971)
Director: Serge Roullet
Length: 80 min
Genre: Historical Drama
Country: France, Italy, Brazil
Distibution: Ruy Guerra, Georges Selmark, Tamour Diop
This film is about a mutiny of African captives onboard of a tradeship. It takes place in 1799.
Harriet (2019)
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Length: 125 min
Genre: Biography
Country: United States
Distribution: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr, Joe Alwyn
An adaptation of the story of Harriet Tubman, a former enslaved woman who, after escaping, becomes a liberator of enslaved African-Americans.
Belle (2013)
Director: Amma Asante
Length: 104 min
Genre: Historical drama
Country: France
Distribution: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid
Belle is the illegitimate child of an enslaved woman and a British Navy admiral. Educated as an aristocratic person, she joins her lover to lead the abolitionist struggle.
The Underground Railroad (2021)
Director: Barry Jenkins
Length: 10×60 min
Genre: Historical Drama series
Country: United States
Distribution: Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, William Jackson Harper
The series tells the story of Cora Randall, an escaped enslaved woman from a Georgia plantation. The title of the series refers to the secret escape and support network set up and used by fugitives.
The Good Lord Bird (2020)
Director: Mark Richard, Ethan Hawke
Length: 7×60 min
Genre: Historical drama series
Country: United States
Distribution: Ethan Hawke, Joshua Johnson-Lionel, Beau Knapp, Joshua Caleb
The series focuses on the Bleeding Kansas clashes between the Border Ruffians (slavers) and the Free Soilers (abolitionists) and revolves around the young enslaved boy, Onion who joins the radical abolitionist movement led by John Brown.
The Birth of a Nation (2017)
Director: Nate Parker
Length: 120 min
Genre: Historical Drama
Country: United States
Distirbution: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Mark Boone Jr
The action centres around Nat Turner, an enslaved man and preacher whose preaching is very successful. So much so that his owner Samuel Turner seeks to use him to strengthen his hold on his enslaved people, but Nat Turner intercedes in a completely different sense...
