The lion with the seven heads

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The lion with the seven heads
Original title The Leone have sept cabeças
Country of production France
Italy
People's Republic of the Congo
original language French
Italian
Portuguese
English
Publishing year 1970
length 97 (Germany), 103 (international) minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Glauber Rocha
script Glauber Rocha
Gianni Amico
production Claude Antoine
music Baden Powell de Aquino
African folklore
camera Guido Cosulich
cut Glauber Rocha
Eduardo Escorel
occupation

The Lion with the Seven Heads is a Franco-Italian film made in 1969 in the Congo , which has just become communist, by director Glauber Rocha, who fled the military dictatorship in his native Brazil .

action

Somewhere in Africa, in the late 1960s. A white Jesuit priest walks through the country and announces the impending end of the world. One day during his pilgrimage, the communist revolutionary Pablo falls into the clutches of the European herald of salvation. Pablo is the symbolic incarnation of the Latin American revolt against oppression by the old world and its structures. The Christian missionary passes his prisoners on to representatives of foreign influencers in the country. It concerns u. a. a US agent, a capitalist investor from Portugal and a German mercenary .

These men keep a black despot and henchman as a presidential puppet of the head of state. Pablo has come to show solidarity and ally with the anti-colonial fighters in Black Africa. His liberation and subsequent fraternization with the black guerrilla Zumbi gives the oppressed hope to finally free themselves from the chains of colonial European oppression. As a symbolic act of liberation, at the end a naked blonde nymph (with the German name Marlene), who is made responsible for the miserable condition of Black Africa as “European whore”, is crucified.

Production notes

The Lion with the Seven Heads was created in 1969 in the former French colony of Brazzaville-Congo and premiered in 1970 during the Venice Film Festival . The German premiere fell on February 11, 1972.

The essayistic film is designed in the form of a political pamphlet and was conceived by Rocha as a sharp reckoning with European colonialism in the Third World . This is also indicated by the five different language words in the film title - “Der” (German), “leone” (Italian), “have” (English), “sept” (French), “cabeças” (Portuguese). Rocha did without a rigid script and instead improvised. The film resembles strongly associative scene arrangements without a fixed framework and lives entirely from its cinematic metaphors and Rocha's deliberately used staging shock elements.

Reviews

“Far from his Brazilian homeland… Glauber Rocha, once the leader of 'Cinema novo', converted to the agitational-analytical film style of his colleague Jean-Luc Godard : Without a compact storyline, he bundled short disputes, speeches, chants and cabaret skits Africa into an artificial… cinema piece. (...) Each of the title words from the languages ​​of earlier and present colonial powers ... stands for the difficulty of the Africans in finding their identity. "

- Der Spiegel , 9/1972

“The film is an open declaration of war against the colonial powers ... and against colonialism. Rocha has once again combined bloody action and symbols, religious and cult motifs into a film of baroque excess. This time the political direction cannot be overlooked, even for the uninitiated. A fascinating colossal painting. "

- Reclams film guide , by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 530. Stuttgart 1973

"Ecstatic alienation cinema by Glauber Rocha, who - freshly exiled from Brazil - presents a piece of Africa agitprop whose title already contains a joke about the multinationality of colonial oppression."

- film.at

“The liberation struggle of the African peoples and the fundamental problems of the Third World are the subject of this allegory, in which a blond European woman embodies colonialism and a mythical mythical creature embodies the revolution. With sharp political polemics Rocha attacks the abuse of power by the rulers and prophesies coming social changes. "

Individual evidence

  1. cf. Reclam's film guide, p. 385
  2. The lion with the seven heads. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 10, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

Web links