The Colonial Misunderstanding

In The Colonial Misunderstanding Jean-Marie Teno sheds light on the complex and problematic relationship between colonization and European missionaries on the African continent. The film looks at Christian evangelism as the forerunner of European colonialism in Africa, indeed, as the ideological model for the relationship between North and South even today. In particular it looks at the role of missionaries in Namibia on the centenary of the 1904 German genocide of the Herero people there. It reveals how colonialism destroyed African beliefs and social systems and replaced them with European ones, as if they were the only acceptable routes to modernity.