We are happy to announce that our PhD Candidate, Manar Ellethy, has published a review of Exterminate All the Brutes (2021) by Haitian filmmaker, Raoul Peck, in the Spring 2023 Issue of the African Arts journal. Known for his 2017 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, a film essay focusing on James Baldwin’s unpublished book “Remember this House” and the assassinations of his friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., Peck is undoubtedly one of the most prolific storytellers of our time. HBO’s four-part documentary series Exterminate All the Brutes is yet another cinematic collage juxtaposing documentary footage, animation, and reenactment scenes with archival imagery in which Peck deconstructs many of the myths that haunt our past and present. The film explores the history of colonialism, genocide, and exploitation from Europe to America to Africa drawing on primarily three books: Sven Lindqvist’s Exterminate All the Brutes, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past. In honor of Black History month, we commemorate the works of Black storytellers, such as Raoul Peck, who through their artistic creativity aim to educate, inspire, and deconstruct stories and histories.
Seen in the image above is a portrait of H. E. Hayward and slave nurse Louisa ca. 1858 as featured in Exterminate All the Brutes (2021). Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society.
You can access the article by checking your university library catalog or through the journal’s page on MIT Press Direct. For additional information and questions please contact the author at m.ellethy@roosevelt.nl.