[…] , and the beauty of his accomplishment make the rest of us look like amateurs, or, perhaps, like children who can never gain any distance from their emotions.
Jonas Mekas
And what is the atmosphere of the film? A stream of non-subtitled French (I assume) conversation, Africa and its residents existing, the disrupting acts by the tourists. White tourists formally appear to be “external” to the film, an effect of the conversation. Actions that disrupt the stasis of the continent and its people can be read, at its most direct, an indictment of the colonial attitude.
There is a certain sequence dispersed throughout the film. First, laugh tracks from the tourists, images of the native residents walking. After a while, a similar laugh track, but a white tourist holding a native resident while laughing. For a second, it is in sync, it is his laugh, until he ceases laughing and the laugh track becomes external. A laugh directed at an ambiguous configuration, both the tourist and the native resident. A few shots later, a laugh track only featuring white tourists. Aha, the inversion! However, the dispersed sequence ends with laughter at a native woman. Is it that, ultimately, indigenous populations end up as targets of laughter? Is it that the colonial mind gains momentary self-awareness, only to return to the norm?
Kubelka is explicitly concerned with the relationship between image-image, image-sound, and sound-sound. Therefore, the sound sync which is not really in sync, the sound disrupts the image. It becomes a mechanism for generating minor metaphors. Consider the lady with the mortar and pestle. When the large pestle comes crashing down, a faint screech, a skeleton of the buffalo head juxtaposed: repeated. Is that food prepared for her family? Perhaps preparing feed for the cattle? Does the buffalo know, beyond the grave, the auto-production of food will lead to more demise for its own kind? A warning from the dead?
The film opens up a possibility space. The only correct interpretation is interpretations: delineating different paths in the possibility space.