Sierra Leone has a great discussion about Blood Diamond… one of the very best I’ve seen!
If what the movie portrays is negative it’s because the truth was negative. The truth must not be hidden. The movie specifically clarifies that this is in the past and that there is now peace in Sierra Leone. Banning the movie would be censorship, and if you want to project a positive you are welcome to make more movies about the new more peaceful Sierra Leone, that is “freedom”.
akk Said:
on May 30, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I think it’s ridiculous for people to argue over whether or not the movie is positive or negative. The themes of the movie—war, violence, amputation, exploitation—are negative so it’s ineviatable the movie will be negative. But banning it!!?? That’s just dumb. That would be like Germans calling for every Holocaust film to be banned because it’s negative.
What bothered me most abou the movie is that it wasn’t even filmed in Sierra Leone. Most of it at least. I’m from Sierra Leone and I can say the beach bar scene was not filmed at the beach in the capital, Freetown. The cast was not Sierra Leonean: their accented Krio was a dead giveaway, as was their accented English for that matter. Sierra Leoneans don’t roll their Rs the way East and Southern Africans do. There are no cheetahs in Sierra Leone, and the fishing village in the opening scene was obviously somewhere in Eastern Africa. Sierra Leonean fishing boats are large, dug-out canoes that are propeled by paddles or motors, not sails. Those triangular sails are found in East Africa, not Sierra Leone.
Disappointingly, Blood Diamond relies on Americans’ ignorance about Africa to callously profit from what was a national catastrophe. Hollywood studios exist to make money for their shareholders but the least they could have done was shoot the movie in Sierra Leone.
Our recovering tourist economy would no doubt have benefited tremendoulsy from the publicity.
akk