Cuba: An African Odyssey
<p>Cuba, an African Odyssey - trailer from Song Pham on Vimeo.</p>
Film Africa is coming to London on the 1-11 November with an amazing selection of films and documentaries. One of the documentaries I am looking forward to finally seeing is Jihan El-Tahri’s Cuba: An African Odyssey. Cuba played a significant role in African liberation movements during the Cold War by undermining flawed US backed military operations on the continent and challenging the oppressive South African apartheid government. In her book Cuba in Africa, Pamela S. Falk reveals that Cuba was involved in seventeen African countries and three insurgencies. For African leaders such as Angola’s Agostinho Neto, Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara and the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, the Cuban Revolution symbolised aspirational freedom and Cuba was an ally against Western neo-colonialism. Although brief and unsuccessful, Che Guevara’s miltary involvement in the Congo was in retaliation against the CIA supported assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Cuba did not only support military operations in Africa, but in 1960 started to receive students from Guinea-Bissau, Congo and Mali. By 1999 more than 28,000 African students had graduated from Cuban institutions and more than 76,000 Cubans had been deployed in Africa. Africa also benefitted from Cuba’s medical internationalism. For example, Cuba sent doctors to Algeria during the independence war against the French. In spite of growing discontent at home for Cuba’s growing involvement in Africa, Fidel’s long term vision was to secure loyalty across the continent and minimise the imperialistic influence of Europe and America. Before actually travelling to Cuba I knew nothing about Cuba’s involvement in Africa in the early years of the Revolution. It’s no coincidence that when I met older Cubans in UNEAC who had travelled to Africa, they were ex-military and had served in Angola and fallen in love with a beautiful African women along the way. Documentaries like Cuba: An African Odyssey are crucial in drawing attention to under documented aspects of contemporary history.
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Freddy Ilanga:
Che's Swahili Translator
Director: Katrin Hansing, Spanish with English & French subtitles, 24:00 minutes, 2009
In April 1965, Freddy Ilanga, a fifteen-year-old Congolese youth, became Che Guevara’s personal Swahili teacher and translator during the latter’s secret mission in the Congo to train anti-Mobutu rebels. After seven intense months by Che Guevara’s side, the Cuban authorities sent Freddy to Cuba. During his early years, Freddy thought that his stay in Cuba would be temporary. However, 40 years passed, during which time he lost all contact with his family and homeland. That is until 2003, when he received an unexpected phone call from Bukavu, his home town. His family had finally found him…
‘Che’s Swahili Translator’ is a documentary about Freddy Ilanga, an African man whose life was abruptly transformed through a chance encounter with one of the great icons of the 20th Century, and which has predominantly been determined by the power struggles of the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution. It is a story about migration and displacement and the high human costs of exile and family separation.