AfricaIs aCountry

Car Commercials and Primitive Peoples

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Car Commercials and Primitive Peoples

By
Tom Devriendt

It could have been just another dull TV ad featuring an Inca boy, Maori warriors, or Maasai dancers–heck, why not throw them all in there–and filed as such in the archives of car-plows-through-exotic-river-bed commercials.

But then we find out through this making-of clip “no Indian was hurt during the shoot” (around the 3:00 mark: “…nenhum índio foi ferido na filmagem”). So, now this commercial becomes something else. It becomes a reminder of Brazil’s past and present fraught with racial discrimination and we forget what the ad was trying to sell.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.