Mau-Mau (1955)
Genre: Documentary | Proto-Mondo
Country: USA | Director: Elwood Price
Language: English | Subtitles: None
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1 | Length: 52mn
Vhsrip Xvid Avi – 624×464 – 23.976fps – 597mb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042721/
Newsman Chet Huntley narrates this documentary showing the rise of the African resistance movement known as the “Mau-Mau” against British rule in East Africa in the early 1950s.
The movie Mau Mau was a true documentary about the Mau Mau uprising. It was not picked up. Sonny along with David F. Friedman bought the rights to the film, hired black actors in Los Angeles, dressed them in supposedly “native” African costumes, and filmed them running around in a studio with machetes. Of course the women were topless and well endowed. The new film was Mau Mau Sex Sex, an exploitation (or sexploitation) film.
No words struck more terror in central Africa in the 1950s than “Mau-Mau”, the name of a majestic liberation army of machete-wielding guerrillas who took bloody aim at the cruel white British colonialists who dominated the farm lands of Kenya. This starkly detailed 1955 documentary about the grisly war between subjugated tribesmen and militant colonists was narrated by famed NBC newsman, Chet Huntley, and so shocked potential audiences that director Elwood Price was unable to get any main stream interest in marketing it. Price turned to exploitation mogul, Dan Sonney, who sold the film as a tawdry expose of jungle sex cults, and it finally managed to pull in a profit.
Mau-Mau still shocks with its graphic depiction of violence and death. The anti-colonial battle raged from 1952 to 1960. The overwhelming British military reaction was fueled by the rabid terror expressed by white settlers. Ultimately less than a hundred settlers were killed, while the death toll among the Kikuyu tribespeople of Kenya was close to 50,000. The high mortality rate among the black natives was a combination of Mau-Mau atrocities (committed against fellow tribesmen who collaborated with White rule) and Britain’s brutal, racist and heavily-armed response.
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