Afropub
1 - L'Afrique en troc 2 - Ces gens là
Patricia Saint-Georges
1993 - 52 min - Betacam SP - Couleur - France, Belgique

Two films of an hour each describe, by means of advertisements, European colonisation in negro Africa from the end of the nineteenth century until the fifties, and neo-colonialism from the acquiring of independance by the African countries up to the present.
To help our understanding main historical events are recalled but the real subject is the idea Europeans get of Africans from advertisements, in the sense that these show up, more clearly than works of art do, all the received ideas, prejudices and phantasms of a society. Advertisers like to say they reflect it : is it pessimism or the need to sell ?
Advertising material is supplemented by all available documents, extracts from films of fiction, documentaries, news bulletins, photos, pictures, engravings and sculpture for the pre-cinema period.