King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule

A four-part essay-series by the director of I Am Not Your Negro, following the sentence that Conrad's Kurtz wrote on his report in Heart of Darkness. Peck narrates a history of colonialism, genocide and white supremacy from Columbus to the American West to the Congo, mixing archive footage, animation and staged scenes. It is the story the textbooks soften.

Why it’s here: The series connects things the curriculum keeps apart: colonial violence, slavery, the Holocaust, and the ideas that justified each. What's punk is the refusal of the neutral tone, and the fact that it names the thread. What's pedagogical is that it can be paused, discussed and argued with. Pairs with Discourse on Colonialism, Orientalism and King Leopold's Ghost. Note: it is long, essayistic and dense, and some critics call its sweep too broad.

In a courtyard in Bamako, Mali, a real trial is staged: African civil society puts the World Bank and the IMF in the dock for the damage done by structural adjustment. Lawyers argue, witnesses testify, and around them the family life of the yard goes on: a singer, a husband and wife whose marriage is breaking, a man building a grave. Sissako lets a western play on a television in the background. It is a film that argues, and is also a film about people.

Why it’s here: It's a film that puts debt and aid on trial, in the courtyard where they land. What's punk is the staging: the powerful are summoned to a poor man's yard and made to answer. What's pedagogical is the way it makes an abstract system concrete, with testimony, cross-examination and the lives around it. Pairs with Debt, The Shock Doctrine and Xala. Note: slow, argumentative and in French and Bambara with subtitles; includes a staged western spoof and an intentionally uncomfortable moment of violence. Sissako's Timbuktu was suggested 10-14.