Premiering on Friday, August 14th in New York, two documentaries perfectly illustrate the unequal exchange between colonizer and colonized. To use a word coined by Malcolm X, “We Come as Friends” that opens at the IFC Theater highlights the “vulturistic” incursion into the newly formed state of South Sudan by both the West and China in search of oil, cheap land and any other wealth that can be extracted in a 21st century version of what Karl Marx called primitive accumulation. In contrast to the baleful impact of capitalist exploiters, “Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango” that opens at the MIST theater in Harlem (46 West 116th Street) reminds one of the beneficial legacy of Africa in the New World. While few people need to be reminded of how the music of slaves was essential to the emergence of jazz and the blues, “Tango Negro” proves that without the African drum, the seemingly purely European tango never would have been born. This is obviously a result of Buenos Aires being mostly Black in the 1830s and 40s according to the people’s history from below that this remarkable film features.
full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/08/08/we-come-as-friends-tango-negro/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
