Addio zio Tom (1971)

Unlike the documentary-style depiction of current events in Africa Addio, Jacopetti and Prosperi immediately make clear that the viewer is watching a fictional representation: Addio zio Tom is a “documentary within History,” delving into nineteenth-century slaveholding America. The two filmmakers film it from a first-person perspective, as modern interviewers equipped with a helicopter who have been projected into the past and find themselves dealing with bizarre and unsettling characters, all involved in the trafficking of African men and women. The history of slavery in the United States: arrival aboard the sailing ships, health inspections upon arrival, sale, use for the most arduous labor, reduction to objects of sexual amusement in private homes and brothels, support for slavery from Catholic hierarchies, hunting expeditions to kill escapees, and use as studs and broodmares to produce more slaves. A historical reconstruction in the form of a journalistic investigation, mounted with substantial production resources and a multitude of Haitian extras (provided by the dictator Doc Chevalier), and marked by an equally stark realism, intended to help viewers understand the horror truly endured by the African people. The historical-reconstruction footage alternates with images depicting contemporary America and its African American people in the early 1970s.