Hidden History: Frantz Fanon and the Algerian War of Independence

Frantz Fanon: His Life, His Struggle, His Work

Directed by Cheikh Djemai (2001)

Film Review

In the US, Frantz Fanon is best known for his influence on the Black Power movement of the sixties and seventies. The author of two major books on Black identity,* Fanon died at age 37 (in 1961).

Prior to watching this film, I was unaware that Fanon left Martinique in 1941 to fight in De Gaulle’s Free French Army. According to family members and friends, it was largely racist abuse he experience in this setting that led him to become a revolutionary.

At the end of the war, he studied philosophy briefly before transferring to medicine. Black Face White Masks, which he wrote as a dissertation for his doctorate in medicine, was rejected by his dissertation committee.

Following graduation he worked at the Blida mental hospital in Algeria, where he became convinced that the “mental illness” he observed in his patients largely stemmed from the system of racist apartheid the French imposed on Algerian Arabs. He was in continuous strife with hospital authorities for his “radical” reforms, including removing the barbed wire fence surrounding the hospital and allowing patients picks and shovels to create a soccer field on hospital grounds.

Resigning in frustration, he moved to Tunis to join the Algerian revolution after the French government expelled him from Algeria.

While there he also played a major role in the All African Congress started by Ghanaian Revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah.

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*Black Skin White Mask and Wretched of the Earth

Public library members can view the film free on Kanopy. Just type “Kanopy” and the name of your library into the search engine.

 

 

Hidden History: French Nuclear Testing in the Pacific

They Went to Stop the Bomb

Francois Reinhardt (2017)

Film Review

This documentary concerns a 1973 protest voyage from New Zealand to the Pacific atoll Mururoa. The aim was to prevent the French from continuing their atmospheric nuclear tests there. The tests, begun in 1966, contaminated the drinking water and crops of the Tureia 50 kilometers (0.62 miles) away. Large numbers of Tureia residents developed leukemia, thyroid and other cancers and experiences miscarriages and birth defects. Strontium 90 from the Pacific testing was detected as far away as Peru, Africa and New Zealand.

The films begins by exploring the birth of antinuclear movement in France and Tahiti (the military base for Pacific nuclear testing). Without approval from the French parliament, the tests (46 between 1966-74) were technically illegal. Although de Gaulle’s government publicly denied the tests were harmful to human health, defense documents declassified in 2013 revealed they were secretly monitoring the blood of Tureia residents for  radionucleotides and corresponding health problems.

The French government also engaged in “psych-ops” against Tahitian activists opposed to the testing. In addition to using the French and Tahitian media, they also framed and and imprisoned the former Tahitian president on false corruption charges.

The protest flotilla was led by the Fri, which means freedom in Danish. It was crewed by 13 antinuclear activists from the US, France, the Netherlands, Britain and New Zealand.

The Fri never reached Mururoa because the French Navy illegally boarded the vessel in international waters, arresting the activists and imprisoning them in Tahiti. In a symbolic act In a symbolic act of support, the New Zealand government send its Navy frigate HMNZS Otago into the test zone area. The latter broke the news of the activists’ arrest to the world press.

Beginning in 1977, Greenpeace undertook similar protest voyages to French Polynesia in the Rainbow Warrior. In 1985, French spies planted explosives on the Greenpeace vessel in Auckland Harbor and sunk it (see French Spy Who Helped Bomb Rainbow Warrior Tracked Down 32 Years Later). Although the French temporarily halted subsequent nuclear testing, they provoked international outrage in 1995 with another series of atmospheric tests.*

Residents of Tureia (interviewed in the film) are still waiting for their radiation-related health problems to be acknowledged and addressed by the French government.

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*The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans atmospheric nuclear testing, was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1996. Technically it has not entered into force, as eight countries refuse to ratify it (US, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel and Iran).

Although the film can’t be embedded, it can be viewed free at the Maori TV website: They Went to Stop the Bomb