by Alessandro Baltera, Matteo Tortone
Italia, 2011, 65'
Officina Koiné (Torino)
In 2008 the Tanzanian government proclaims “an emergency of albinos” following a series of homicides (more than 60 in two years) and aggressions, principally coming from the zone of lake Victoria, around the Mwanza city. The bodies were amputated using machete and the organs are sold at an ad hoc market, and are used for the ritual aim. It becomes a fundamental ingredient of witchcraft, able to acquire an immediate richness and power. From a distance of two years, an albino community seems to be regaining normality, constituted from the fight against cancer and a progressive social recognition. The fight against cancer of Maneno, a boy of seventeen years, encroaches with the tentative of Dickson, an albino almost his age mate, to make a fortune on the local hip hop scene. In the meantime, Kapole, in the quality of representing the albino association, tries to amplifier the rate of mutual help, investigating on the real cause of the homicides, mandate, in order to have justice done. Samson, a friend of Kapole, tries to look ahead and guarantee a future dignity of his children. The chronicle of homicides enters dramatically in the individual life.
The series of homicides of albinos in the aim of ritual reveals a compromised ritual condition which has given a way to a real market of human beings. How can a man reduce a life of another one to the point of selling the parts of the body? How can a man all over a sudden realize that the other person is a potential merchandise? Looking at his very hands, legs, sexual organs as a respective economic value? A life of a Tanzanian albino is a continuous fight against sun and the skin cancer. Then comes in the social problems, the acceptance of diversity. In the last years it has been added the business of the parts of their body, a business which has had as an epicentre the city of Mwanza.
Starting from these considerations we have developed our work from two directives: from one part Maneno and the
existential problems of a white African in the fullness of its development, with a continuous pinch of conscience of its
very alteration, of a shame to be affected by a skin tumour, in which makes the exhibition of Dickson, alias Mr. White,
who are almost of the same age, tries to enhance the value of diversity suggesting on the scene a local hip hop; on the other side trying to tell the dynamics which characterizes the Tanzanian society, devastated from the series of homicides, in which the argument is a taboo: Kapole and the albino’s association of the city, tries to amplifier the rate of mutual help to get justice and to enlighten the real causes, denied or simply kept quiet; and Samson, completely absorbed in the local imaginery hung in thee balance between rationality and magic, is as typical case of a man forced to change his life because of homicides and to be under treath by a faceless menace.