Enc2019: Fanon Yesterday, Today

The Bioscope is proud to once again host The Encounters Documentary Film Festival in Johannesburg.

FANON YESTERDAY, TODAY

Dir. Hassane Mezine

2018|France|Algeria|86min

Taking his point of departure in former French president, Nicholas Sarkozy’s criticized speech in Dakar in 2007 where he claimed that Africa and Africans have yet to insert themselves into world history, French-Algerian filmmaker Hassane Mezine embarks on a journey exploring the memory and legacy of Martiniquan psychiatrist, author and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon.

Through interviews with activists and scholars – among them Olivier Fanon, Cornel West and Palestinian psychiatrist Samah Jabr - and extracts of Fanon’s seminal texts, the filmmaker links Fanon’s activism and writing with contemporary anti-imperialists struggles in Portugal, France, the USA, Niger, Algeria, South Africa and Palestine.

Without reducing or romanticizing, Fanon is evoked, not as a glorified hero of the past, but as a thinker and inspiring doer whose vision of true liberation the interviewees share