Presented as part of You Say You Want a Revolution?

"One of the most important films to ever come out of African cinema. Part history lesson and part state of affairs address, a shockingly volatile and impressive piece of cinema that entertains as well as it advocates."—Wilfred Okiche, MUBI Notebook

Featuring a conversation with Anny-Dominique Curtius after the 5/5 screening.

Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty proved a watershed event for African cinema—one of the continent’s first musicals as well as a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian theater, and joyous agitprop. Using an enormous mock slave ship as the film’s only soundstage, Hondo mounts intricately choreographed reenactments and dance numbers to investigate more than three centuries of imperialist oppression. The story traverses the West Indies, Europe, and the Middle Passage; jumps across time to depict the effects of official French policy upon the colonized, the enslaved, and their descendants; and surveys the actions and motivations of the resigned, the revolutionary, and the powers that be (along with their lackeys). No mere extravaganza, West Indies is a call to arms for a spectacular yet critical cinematic reimagining of an entire people’s history of resistance and struggle.