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.