Last night, I went to the Cinema Village in New York with my wife and a friend to watch a new movie, Crumbs, which has been called “Ethiopia’s first post-apocalyptic science fiction film” by OkayAfrica and IndieWire. The premise for the story is typical of the genre of post-apocalyptic sci-fi — a man and a woman trying to make meaning out of their lives after the entire planet and civilization as we know it has been destroyed by a world war. What they make meaning out of are the “crumbs” or detritus that remain after the war, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurines and a basketball poster of Michael Jordan. As in other movies of this genre such as A Boy and His Dog and Mad Max, the “crumbs” of previous civilizations take on religious significance in the post-apocalyptic culture that emerges. The absurdly curatorial assessment of what we might consider to be trash serves as a satirical commentary on globalization today, as the valuation of such objects in the future draws ironic attention to what is absurd about the values of consumer capitalism today and its hegemonic dominance throughout the world. The satire of Crumbs is often hilarious and insightful. One might compare Crumbs to other surrealistic sci-fi movies that critique the forces of market-driven globalization such as Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. And one might compare the ideas expressed in the film to the critiques of globalization’s commodity fetish made by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek. You can see the trailer here:
What makes the movie unique is not just that it takes place in Ethiopia but that the director used a contemporary Ethiopian landscape as a setting for a post-apocalyptic future. For example, the salt lake Beseka near the town of Metahara and the back of the defunct train station in Dire Dawa as well as some of Ethiopia’s popular tourist destinations such as the beautiful Wenchi Crater Lake. (I’ve included hyperlinks to webpages with pictures of these locations.) Hence, the juxtaposition of future and present is itself also an odd commentary on Ethiopia, which is currently one of the world’s fastest growing economies, but whose recent development is at the same time a striking contrast to its high poverty rate and the leftover detritus from previous political regimes and economic projects.
But we might consider the film an example of globalization in another way — not in terms of what the film is about, but in terms of how it got produced, distributed, and marketed. Although the actors and setting are Ethiopian, and although it is marketed as “Ethiopia’s first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film,” the writer, director, and producer, Miguel Llanso, is from Spain, and so are most of the crew. The movie is technically a co-production of three countries: Ethiopia, Spain, and Finland, though I’m not sure what Finland’s role was. It is perhaps worth thinking carefully about why this movie is being advertised as an Ethiopian film especially considering that none of the hundreds of movies made in the past decade by Ethiopian production companies have been featured at New York art-house cinemas such as Cinema Village — the sort of posh theater that would invite directors from around the world to answer questions from the audience. And indeed, after watching the film last night, I was able to ask Llanso exactly the question of how his film relates to the Ethiopian cinema. Llanso has lived in Ethiopia since 2008 and is somewhat knowledgeable about the place and its cinema culture and is admirably self-conscious and thoughtful about his own relation to its people, whom he clearly respects.
As readers of my blog well know, the question of an Ethiopian cinema has been on my mind for some time now, due to my work for Sandscribe Communications and my teaching of film theory to students in Addis Ababa, and also due to the fact that Ethiopia’s film industry has grown so rapidly over the past decade. One could argue that such international collaborations and co-productions will encourage the local industry, or one could argue the opposite that foreign filmmakers and investors have an unfair competitive advantage over local producers. I’m not sure how I would respond to either of those two views, as I’m still trying to figure that out and suspect that each specific situation is unique. What struck me about Llonso’s answer to my question — which was similar to something he has said previously in a published interview [here] — is that he very clearly asserted that the style and theme of his film was completely different from anything being done by Ethiopian filmmakers in Ethiopia. Moreover, he suggested that Ethiopia’s film industry was so dominated by commercial interests that its movies have tended to be formulaic soap-opera-like melodramas or romantic comedies lacking artistic value.
Llonso’s comments are somewhat problematic since they beg a lot of questions. One might argue that movie industries in all countries are dominated by commercial interests that produce movies that lack artistic value — “art house” cinema is generally the exception, not the rule, of the movie industry. Moreover, his dismissive statement about Ethiopia’s film industry begs the question of what artistic value is, since the genre of post-apocalyptic sci-fi is not necessarily more artistic than a romantic comedy. After all, Shakespeare wrote formulaic romantic comedies, and most sci-fi movies are quite commercial. Moreover, as professor Aboneh Ashigrie of Addis Ababa University has recently written, many of Ethiopia’s directors actually use the genre of romantic comedy and melodrama to address serious social issues such as changing gender roles, the widening gap between rich and poor, HIV-AIDS, and even the effects of globalization on local cultures. Some of these movies reflect intelligently on the goals of environmentalists, feminists, and other progressive social movements.
So, it is curious that a film being marketed as Ethiopia’s first sci-fi film is being made by a Spanish director who quite explicitly says that his film is nothing like the films being made by Ethiopian directors and producers. This might provoke one to re-think what Llonso is doing when he makes a movie about the world’s post-apocalyptic future that features so much of Ethiopia’s present. What about Ethiopia today is any more or less apocalyptic than his home country Spain or, indeed, my own home in Brooklyn, New York? After all, Llonso’s production budget was obviously too small for him to design futuristic movie sets, so he was in some ways appropriating Ethiopia’s geography that is more available to him for his own artistic ends.
This appropriation got especially problematic, for instance, when his mostly European crew accidentally stumbled into regions of Ethiopia where there is some ethnic conflict. One of his film sites was near the town of Metahara in Ethiopia’s Fantalle district. In that district, for the past half century or more, the local Karayu tribe has been persecuted, kicked off their land, and denied access to water because the Ethiopian government has given the valuable land to multinational corporations. You can read more about this situation [here], but one can easily imagine that the economic and environmental conditions within which the Karayu struggle to survive are tough. Perhaps Llonso and his crew were unaware of this, and perhaps they were also unaware that they could have worked with a Karayu film-maker or with local Karayu environmentalist organizations that work in that area such as Labata Fantalle so as not to accidentally upset the people whose backyards they were filming in.
I don’t mean for my critique to be taken as a simple criticism, because I think Llonso’s film is brilliant, and my critique is intended to draw attention to the changing dynamic context of film production, distribution, and marketing in today’s global economy. As Llonso is himself very well aware, everyone operates within that dynamic context whether they want to or not, and my intent in this blog is to shed light on that context rather than to criticize Llonso’s film.
In many ways, we might imagine him participating in a new movement called “Afrofuturism” in which black and white artists creatively work toward a future that they build out of the detritus and “crumbs” of the present. One example of this is the very successful Kenyan short sci-fi film “Pumzi” which also presents an African hero in a post-apocalyptic world. The theme of “Pumzi” is clearly environmentalist, and its hero a strikingly beautiful woman. You can watch the entire 21-minute film on YouTube [here]. Below is the trailer:
The global “Afrofuturist” movement is in some ways a response to what many African intellectuals have called “Afropessimism.” Afropessimism is the tendency of American and European media to represent Africa as a place of war, famine, and corruption. Instead, we might see Africa as a vibrant place where artists work hard to create something positive out of the “crumbs” of an inherently self-destructive global capitalism. In the context of such conversations about Afropessimism and Afrofuturism, one might raise the question of why Llonso opted for a “diminutive hero” (quoting one review), a somewhat crippled man, rather than a more traditional heroic figure. On the one hand, if we consider the ways in which European and American media have repeatedly represented Africa as a “crippled” space, we might challenge Llonso’s choice, but on the other hand, since Afrofuturism is a movement highly conscious of the politics of disability and technology, we might see this as a smartly “futurist” choice.
There is more to say about this film, as it is the type of film that provokes conversations. One could read it is a European film, rather than an Ethiopian one, but one might also consider it in the context of the rapidly changing world and the new African artistic movements. One recent documentary, Afripedia, has attempted to capture this wealth of culture and creativity in six different countries in the new Africa. Check it out, here’s the trailer for Afripedia’s “Ghana”:
Film and Media 