By Thomas M. Puhr.
Proof positive that a musical can simultaneously educate and entertain, excite and incite.”
France’s imperial history is portrayed through experimental musical theater in Med Hondo’s West Indies (1979). Based on Daniel Boukman’s 1971 book Les Negriers and subtitled The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty, the film is both a political indictment and a vibrant, even playful spectacle; a new 4K restoration, now playing at New York’s Film Forum, should help shine a light on this seminal work of African cinema.
The Mauritanian director announces his intentions in an opening scene that takes place in a board room. A map of France’s colonial territories looms, like a film screen, behind a row of throne-like chairs. An opulent spread of fruit rests on a long wooden table. Five representatives – among them a social worker and a priest – enter and take their seats. “Let me remind you what our objective is,” intones their leader. “Our plan requires that those tiny little people on those tiny little islands vanish from the map.”
The methods used to guarantee this cultural erasure – fixed elections, forced emigration, assimilation – are frequently (and ominously) referred to as “The Plan.” How have this plan and its malignant permutations, West Indies asks, been deployed from the 17th century to the present day? And, perhaps more importantly, how can people resist them and initiate lasting change? This latter question proves essential; though at times despairing, the filmoffers hope in the form of a rallying call for aggressive activism. Even its most exuberant song-and-dance numbers are cut through with this urgent plea.

The story begins in 1640 – with the arrival of sugar cane at the French Antilles via Jean Aubert – and quickly jumps to 1655, when the exportation of sugar cane coincides with an intensifying slave trade. We also glimpse then present-day Paris, where French natives complain of all the Black immigrants entering the city. “They swarm all over!” grumbles an elderly white woman. “They chatter, they whistle…They’re promiscuous, they shout, they howl and bawl! And their cooking reeks of spices! It stinks up the whole city!”
This is a lot of information to cover – nearly 300 years’ worth – in under two hours, and Hondo wisely foregoes even attempting to do so in a comprehensive, linear way, instead visually juxtaposing key moments from different time periods. His non-chronological structure illustrates some damning throughlines. Caribbeans emigrating to Paris by plane, for example, are placed side by side with slaves being transported by ship. The implication is obvious: Such emigration policies (the social worker has a Freudian slip and calls it “exportation”) are the new form of bondage. The plan is still in effect.
Other historical events are “acted” out through soundless tableaux vivants. “12 September 1792 France Becomes a Republic,” one placard reads. “1802 Napoleon Reinstates Slavery. 1830 Louis-Philippe Maintains Slavery.” This quick scene (the tableaux series comprises less than one minute of screentime) again illustrates an ongoing hypocrisy: freedom for some, sure, but oppression for many others. The effect is overwhelming, almost dizzying; the actors playing Napoleon and the like stare into the camera – unblinking, almost accusatory.
Although the film draws attention to its theatricality – we’re constantly reminded that we’re looking at a stage – it also revels in the unique tools cinema has to offer: overlapping voiceovers, slow dissolves, even some cartoon animation.”
But West Indies is far from a dry history lesson; Hondo infuses the proceedings with a propulsive, wicked energy (remember, this is also a lavish musical). Just as he takes a idiosyncratic approach to time, he does so with place, setting the entire film on a gigantic slave ship built inside an empty warehouse. Emblazoned at the top of a wall – and offering an ironic counterpoint to the inhumanity and racism frequently on display – is the French motto: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Boukman’s lyrics similarly comment on this disparity: “Mother France, deprive me of freedom,” emigrants sing, “but please keep my fridge and stomach full!”
Although the film draws attention to its theatricality – we’re constantly reminded that we’re looking at a stage – it also revels in the unique tools cinema has to offer: overlapping voiceovers, slow dissolves, even some cartoon animation. Hondo’s camera is rarely just plopped in front of the stage, stationary. Instead, he and director of photography François Catonné find thrilling ways to explore space. An early, expository shot begins with a view of a grey winter day before traveling – via an extended, breathtaking dolly movement – into the warehouse, where we see the slave ship set and an immense cast of characters. In addition to its impressive stylism, the shot also deftly underlines the film’s preoccupation with interweaving the past with the present, the theater with cinema, artifice with cold harsh reality.
In its closing sequences, West Indies bursts into an energetic call to arms. Against a percussive drumbeat and multi-colored dancers, singers invite “brothers from all around” to join the fight: “We must arm ourselves with guns…compasses and hammers…hoes, spades and machetes! Rise up! Now is the time!” It’s a bold statement: proof positive that a musical can simultaneously educate and entertain, excite and incite.
Thomas M. Puhr lives in Chicago, where he teaches English and language arts. A regular contributor to Bright Lights Film Journal, he has published “‘Mysterious Appearances’ in Jonathan Glazer’s Identity Trilogy: Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin” in issue 15.2 of Film International. His book Fate in Film: A Deterministic Approach to Cinema is available from Wallflower Press.