Watch Mau Mau

MAU MAU: A political analysis of Africa's first modern guerrilla war and the myths that still surround it.
In October 1952, Britain declared a State of Emergency in Kenya. Its object: the defeat of "Mau Mau." In the war that followed, fewer than 40 of Kenya's 40,000 white settlers were killed while more than 15,000 Africans lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands more were arrested and subjected to a humiliating and often brutal process of "rehabilitation." But what was Mau Mau? A movement based, according to the British Colonial Secretary, on a "perverted nationalism and a sort of nostalgia for barbarism"? Or the Land Freedom Army, an organized political and military response to repression and armed aggression?
Using newsreel and previously inaccessible archive footage, and drawing on interviews with participants on both sides, MAU MAU examines the myth and the reality of Africa's first modern guerrilla war. Part 2 of The Black Man's Land Trilogy.
"A unique record of what colonialism means in human terms."--San Francisco Chronicle. "A solid historical document skewed valuably to a distinctive African point of view." --New York Times. "A rare, penetrating and yet sympathetic look at African nationalism." --The Standard (Nairobi).