http://www.mininova.org/tor/1525966

Africa Addio (En: “Africa Blood and Guts”) is an Italian documentary prepared in 1966 by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, about the transition that African States made, from colonial provinces to free countries. This piece is indistinguishably a part of a time when certain norms of film shooting were acceptable, such as editing voices without restraint, adding effects unmercifully as well as other sounds, but the peculiar aspect of this doc lies in the veracity of its images.

It describes an important part of the history of Africa and of the countries who made it part of their colonies such as Great Britain, Portugal, Belgium, France or the Boers. In most of the cases, these transitions were bloody and cruel, like only humans can carry out, leaving the weakest link to receive the worst blow. After the departure of the white man, local leaders, tribes and guerrillas started to fill the vacuum of power left behind, even through the commission of what we call today crimes against humanity.

Rape, amputations of body parts and cannibalism were only part of the means used to express the hatred against the white man and against anyone related to them. And so, missionaries, Arabs, Muslims, Indians and others were targeted. Needless to say that wild fauna was the first to be massacred, as dire times arrived.

Although the white man formed an intrinsic part of modern slavery and the exploitation of the African natives, well before the first white man touched this continent, slavery was a common practice conducted between different black tribes. According to some historians, Arabs were also responsible for a major part of this business and for the enslavement of almost 18 million persons along the years, compared with 12 million slaves that were transferred to the Americas. Nevertheless, white people were responsible for the second wave of African exploitation, by appropriating the African continental resources to the benefit of western countries, but let´s not forget – always with the collaboration of local politicians, leaders and chiefs.

All and all, and until the last of the colonies, African black natives were freed for the benefit of a small black elite who keeps enriching itself at the expense of the multitudes.

Flawless, aside from having Michael Caine and Demi Moore star in it, depicts, among others, a creative and intelligent plot, that tells of the diamond business, and the people behind it. Demi Moore is a young and successful executive, with 15 years of experience in selling diamonds at the London Diamond Corporation. Just when Moore’s character is supposed to be promoted, as the most qualified person to fill in the vacant position – her chauvinistic boss decides to prefer someone else, making her feel defeated and betrayed. The company avid janitor (Mr. Hobbs) profits from this course of events, as Moore, a senior manager, gets involved in his master plan to rob the company vault from its contents – several tons of diamonds. The janitor had done his homework and knows who is watching, when, and how as well as when the cameras are not recording. But there is one thing that he is missing, and that is secret code that allows to open the vault – this is where Laura (Moore) steps in. At the beginning, Laura hesitates and thinks the whole thing over and over. However, at a company party, when the company is close to closing a huge deal with the Russian diamond society – she cautiously makes it into her boss’s security case and find out the company’s vault code. After the deed is done, Laura the code on to Hobbs, and both agree to rob only a couple of million pounds worth of diamonds for the both of them. Mr. Hobbs then goes into the vault and just when things seemed to have worked as planned, Laura is called into the vault by the security officer and discovers that the only thing left there are the walls, i.e. – that the janitor has cleaned the whole place out. The question remains, how he has done it, an old man carrying several tons of stones alone? Score: 5