| | |  | BELGIUM | Home » » Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death | | | | | | | Description: | | CONGO: WHITE KING, RED RUBBER, BLACK DEATH describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber. Families were held as hostages, starving to death if the men failed to produce enough wild rubber. Children's hands were chopped off as punishment for late deliveries. The Belgian government has denounced this documentary as a "tendentious diatribe" for depicting King Leopold II as the moral forebear of Adolf Hitler, responsible for the death of 10 million people in his rapacious exploitation of the Congo. Yet, it is agreed today that the first Human Rights movement was spurred by what happened in the Congo. . | | | Product Details: | | | Actors:
| Elie Lison, Roger May, Steve Driesen, Tshilombo Imhotep, Annette Kelly | | Director:
| Peter Bate | | Format:
| Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | | Language:
| Dutch, English, French | | Subtitle:
| English | | Number of Discs:
| 1 | | Studio:
| Art Mattan | | Run Time:
| 84 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| February 28, 2006 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 11 reviews |
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| $28.88 This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. | New | | | $99.98+ $4.99 *Shipping | Used
- Good | | | $119.99+ $4.99 *Shipping | New | |
| New | |
| $28.88 This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. | New | | | $119.99+ $4.99 *Shipping | New | |
| Used | |
| $99.98+ $4.99 *Shipping | Used
- Good | |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 11 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 32 found the following review helpful:
 Well researched, excellenty told story of an ongoing tragedyMar 05, 2006
By A. O. Edozie
"Afam"
A superbly told and excellently researched documentary on the genocide perpetrated against the Congolese people by King Leopold II of Belgium, and covered up and perpetuated by the Belgian State.
This moving documentary tells in a microcosm the story of modern Africa - which can only be truly understood by looking at each country - and exposes the roots of its current pains.
If the United States thrives because it was built on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; it can be no accident that a country founded on the undescribable principles instituted by King Leopald II and perpetuated by the Belgian State, remains steeped in violence, poverty and human deprivity.
Afam Edozie
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Useful for my AP World History classApr 07, 2010
By C. Blanchard
I showed this video to my AP World History class. My students enjoyed watching it. The documentary helped to show the horrors of Belgian colonialism through photographs, historians, and archive testimony (missionaries, reporters, etc). The documentary does not attempt or purport to present an objective view of Belgian colonialism, however. It clearly has an agenda - make Belgians, in particular, and whites, in general, feel guilty about their past. As long as you and your students know this, go ahead and buy it!
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
very interesting, very well doneFeb 20, 2009
By Rhett D. Sorensen
"Old Keen Eye"
This documentary ranks up there with some of the very best and most interesting that I have ever watched. It goes into a good deal of depth on the history and how Leopold exploited the country and set it up for further failure in the future. It was very interesting and kept me glued to the tube. I own somewhere near 100 documentaries and this is one of the best I've seen.
(Don't let the goofy cartoon intro stuff fool you)
21 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 A dishonest film that betrays its moral purposeNov 07, 2007
By Lea W. Fridman
I watched this film one evening after spending the day reading Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost." I was reading quite slowly and underlining in order to absorb the information since I am planning a trip up the Congo river. As I watched the film I recognized one quoted passage after another (archival quotes) which I had read in Hochschild only a few hours before. The numbers of quotes that I recognized were quite extraordinary. I waited for the credits fully expecting to see Hochschild's name, but it was not there! Someone wanted me and you and everyone else to think that they had studied the archives and struggled to made judicious choices of quoted materials (a gigantic job). Someone didn't want me or anyone else to know that Hochschild had done their homework for them.
It is particularly galling, in a film that purports to have a moral core, to find that the team making the film stole Hochschild's work from him and misled their audience in the credits. And in a film about Leopold's theivery, misuse and misrule of the Congo, no less! What would Joseph Conrad have said!!!!
5 of 6 found the following review helpful:
The two faces of Leopold II of BelgiumAug 15, 2007
By Augustine Invictus
This documentary is very interesting and also revolting in the sense that it exposes the 2 sides( good and evil) of a European sovereign, King Leopold II of Belgium. The good side which many people may find hard to accept is that he did raise the level of an unknown primitive Congo into an exotic Belgian colonial state with its remarkable geography and wildlife which was evidently an explorer's dream. But perhaps his most significant deed was his exploitation of its natural resources to contribute fuel to the ongoing outside world's Industrial Revolution.With all due respect to his Majesty,he could be dubbed a benefactor by some,although with a Jekyl and Hyde personality. And at what cost to the Congo and its indigenous inhabitants? Revolting!...which exposes his bad side that greatly overshadows the good.Wanton slavery,burning and devastation of villages,torture,murder of human beings, mutilation and amputation of limbs! Could it be that this revolting practice of amputation was started by Leopold II in a gigantic scale in the Congo so that the idea was passed on to the rest of Africa to be implemented in its subsequent post colonial civil wars? As one reviewer from Lagos,Nigeria puts it plainly: This historical documentary about the Congo's exploitation may serve as an aid to understand modern Africa by "looking at each country and exposing the roots of its pains." I highly recommend watching and studying this interesting DVD.
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