The Empire in Africa (2006)
Runtime: 87 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
DVD Info
Release:
May 8, 2007
DVD Features:
- Keep Case
- Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
- (unspecified) - English
Additional Release Material:
- Additional Footage
- Deleted Scenes
- Interview - Philippe Diaz - Director
- Trailers - Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Features:
- Scene Selection
DVD-ROM:
- Weblinks
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
Highly recommended as a sobering companion piece to Hollywood's relatively-sanitized version of the same subject-matter in Blood Diamond.
There are images in "The Empire in Africa" that I wish I'd never seen, but it's worth enduring them to hear a side of the story that the media and Hollywood overlooked.
Diaz refuses to accept received wisdom about the RUF's savagery, and it clearly took more than one revolutionary movement to reduce Sierra Leone to abject poverty.
That Empire lacks clear-cut heroes and villains is not necessarily a fault, but the movie's muddle too often comes across as an attempt to avoid assigning responsibility where it belongs.
[A] harrowing but provocative work of documentary filmmaking.
Philippe Diaz's tumultuous documentary is a noble but failed attempt to explicate the tragedy of Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war.
It’s possible that Diaz’s sympathy for the RUF is symptomatic of a lingering tendency on the left to sanctify anything that calls itself a revolutionary front.
Absolutely powerful indictment of imperialist greed in Sierra Leone. Reveals the hypocrisy of "humanitarian" interventions.
Filmmaker Philippe Diaz makes a strong case for blaming the international community in general, and the United Nations in particular, for the needless protraction of a conflict that left 70,000 dead and millions displaced.


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