Italian shockumentary about Africa is all voyeurism and no reflection.
Lately we’ve been highlighting Italian illustrator Sandro Symeoni’s brilliant paperback covers, but today we’ve decided to bring him back as a poster artist, which is how he first found acclaim, and why we first noticed him. He painted this for the schockmentary Africa ama, which would translate as “Africa loves,” but is known in English as Africa Uncensored. 1970s shockumentaries have an educational veneer, but are mostly about cultural titillation and making viewers in modern countries lose their lunches, as practices such as male and female circumcision, animal killing, and scarification are filmed unflinchingly and up close.
This genre of movies, particularly popular in Italy, showed all this and did it with zero self awareness, considering modern powers didn’t just engage in torture and killing during their empire building, but industrialized it. It takes efficiency to slaughter millions. Of course, pointing out that indisputable fact makes people angry in this anti-truth age, so we’ll move on and note that Africa ama was mostly the brainchild of brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, a couple of guys we’ve run across before for their archaeology work. See what we mean here. Africa ama premiered in Italy today in 1971, and if you dare you can watch it here while the link lasts.
Lost army found in Egyptian desert by two former shockumentary directors.
It reads like the backstory of an Indiana Jones movie: 2,500 years ago an army of 50,000 men vanished without a trace in the Egyptian desert. At least, this was the account by Greek historian Herodotus. He wrote that the army had been sent by the Persian king Cambyses from Thebes to destroy the Oracle of Amun, located in the Oasis of Siwa. But the army never made it to Siwa. Instead they were swallowed up by a great storm that, according to Herodotus, “[brought] with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear.”
Now two Italian researchers, twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, appear to have substantiated Herodotus’s story by locating a field of ancient skeletal remains in Egypt. Along with the bones, some of which you see above, the Castiglionis found bronze weapons, jewelry, and arrow tips. The two were already highly respected for their discovery twenty years ago of the lost city of Berenike Panchrysos, located in modern day Sudan. They presented these new findings at the archaeological film festival of Rovereto, Italy, to much acclaim.
However, we found it odd that two men described in all the articles we saw as “top researchers” presented their discoveries in a film rather than a scientific journal, so we did some research of our own and found that two Italian siblings/filmmakers also named Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni gave us five controversial African shockumentaries in the 1970s, including Addio ultimo uomo, Africa ama, and Africa dolce e selvaggia, films in which audiences saw unedited footage of the severing of a penis, the skinning of a human corpse, the deflowering of a girl with a stone phallus, and a group of hunters tearing apart an elephant’s carcass.
Are these Castiglionis the same two guys? They’d be in their early seventies by now, but yes, it’s the same pair. Not one website we saw made this connection, so we’ll just pat ourselves on the back. We haven’t seen the Castiglionis’ films, but we don’t particularly like the type because they present African life as something savage and cruel while helping to blind Westerners to the fact that our mass shootings and modern warfare are far bloodier and more destructive. But if you’re interested in learning how much people can mellow over the years, have a viewing of these respected researchers’ early shock flicks. They’ll probably give you nightmares, but they also prove that restless, morbid, voyeuristic minds can eventually mature. Which means there’s hope for us here at Pulp.
Update: At least one expert has called the discovery a hoax. Details here. Those Castiglionis are sneaky devils.
After two months of evading police and federal authorities, Angela Davis is arrested in New York City by the FBI. She had been sought in connection with a kidnapping and murder because one of the guns used in the crime had been bought under her name. But after a trial a jury agreed that owning the weapon did not automatically make her complicit in the crimes.
1978—Sid Vicious Arrested for Murder
Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen is found in their room at New York City’s Chelsea Hotel. Vicious and Spungen had a famously stormy relationship, but Vicious proclaims he is innocent. He is released on bail and dies of a heroin overdose before a trial takes place.
1979—Adams Publishes First Hitchhiker's Book
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in a series, is published by Douglas Adams. The novels follow on the heels of the tremendously successful British television series of the same name.
1976—China Coup Thwarted
The new head of the Chinese Communist Party, Hua Goufeng, snuffs out a coup led by Chairman Mao’s widow Jiang Qing and three other party members. They become known as the Gang of Four, and are tried, found guilty of treason, and receive death sentences that are later commuted to lengthy prison terms.
1987—Loch Ness Expedition Ends
A sonar exploration of Scotland’s Loch Ness, called Operation Deepscan, ends after a week without finding evidence that the legendary Loch Ness Monster exists. While the flotilla of boats had picked up three sonar contacts indicating something large in the waters, these are considered to be detections of salmon schools or possibly seals.
1971—London Bridge Goes Up
After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
1975—Burton and Taylor Marry Again
British actor Richard Burton and American screen star Elizabeth Taylor secretly remarry sixteen months after their divorce, then jet away to a second honeymoon in Chobe Game Park in Botswana.
