▶ watchcultGoodbye Uncle Tom
1971 · Italy · 123m
Jacopetti and Prosperi's slavery reconstruction, and the most indefensible thing the mondo pair ever shot.
Mondo
1962–1985 · 5 films catalogued
Documentary as sideshow. Assume half of what you are watching was staged.
Shock documentaries, named after Mondo Cane (1962), "A Dog's World", which was an international hit and produced an Oscar-nominated song, More.
The pitch and the reality
The pitch is a globe-trotting tour of real customs, rituals and deaths. The reality is that a large and unmeasurable share of the footage was staged, and the framing is colonial throughout. The camera goes abroad looking for people behaving strangely and finds exactly that.
The endpoints
Faces of Death (1978 onwards) is mostly fabricated. Africa Addio (1966) is not fabricated, and is much harder to sit through for that reason.
Why it matters here
Mondo is the link between the newsreel and the cannibal boom. Cannibal Holocaust is a mondo film that says out loud what mondo films are.
Where to start
All 5 →▶ watchcult
▶ watchknownFaces of Death
1978 · USA · 109m
Mostly fake, entirely cynical, and a rental-shop legend regardless.
▶ watchknownAfrica Addio
1966 · Italy · 138m
Not staged, which makes it far worse. A repellent document.
▶ watchknownMondo Cane
1962 · Italy · 105m
The original. Oscar-nominated song, colonial gaze, half of it staged.
▶ watchcanonCannibal Holocaust
1980 · Italy · 95m
A serious film about media atrocity that committed real atrocity.