Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 2000 | Page 117

The Post-Colonial Vision of The “Great White** o f Lambarene Bassek Ba Kobhio’s film The "Great White" o f Lamharene (1994) is a striking example of an African decolonized gaze at imperialism and whiteness through the use of a black oppositional gaze. Ba Kobhio, who is emerging as one of the most important and influential voices of the New African Cinema, was born in Cameroon in 1957. Initially, Ba Kobhio set out to become a writer. He became a widely published short story writer and novelist, winning a prestigious prize for the best short story in French in 1976. Ba Kobhio subsequently went on to university schooling, and received a diploma in sociology as well as philosophy. While he was pursuing his studies, he started to work part-time as an assistant film director, and literary critic, and eventually enrolled in the cinematography department of the Ministry of Infonnation and Culture. Ba Kobhio’s first major cinematic credit was as assistant director on Claire Denis’s film Chocolat (1987), which also examines the process of colonialist agency. Ba Kobhio directed his first documentary film in 1988, and his first feature film, Sango Mala, in 1991. O f his work in The "Great White" o f Lamharene, shot on location in Gabon and Cameroon, with post-production accomplished in France, he commented that “1 wanted to produce a fragmented film, because time initially rules by constraint, by rape (the start of the film corresponds with the omnipotence of the ‘Great White Man’), then, as Africa progressively gains the upper hand, African life takes over” (press release, 1). As bell hooks notes in Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies: Spaces of agency exist for Black people, wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see. Subordinates in relations to power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that ‘looks’ to document, one that is oppositional. (199) An oppositional gaze is employed by many Black filmmakers of the African Diaspora, from Spike Lee to Julie Dash to Ousmene Sembene. Most often it is called upon to resist further colonized images of African and African Americans. In The "Great White" o f Lamharene, however, the oppositional gaze is employed as a means to problematize the spectacle of the great white imperialist figure of Albert Schweitzer and in a larger sense, received notions of whiteness itself.