The Mis-education of Haile Gerima - The Ethioguide Interview

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"Adwa," the long-awaited documentary by Haile Gerima, will premiere in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 20. In a wide-ranging interview with Ethioguide, filmmaker Haile Gerima discusses his evolution from a left-leaning intellectual who rejected his tradition roots to a fervent Pan-Africanist intent on reclaiming his cultural birthright.

Ethioguide - In your works one can see, especially in "Sankofa," that you have a Pan-Africanist view of the world. You even subtitled Adwa, "An African Victory." How did you arrive at this perspective?

Tapestery depicts the battle of Adwa Mingei International Museum, San Diego, Calif.

Haile - Well, for one, the victory was celebrated as an African victory at it's100th anniversary. That's a subtext for me. Though I knew about Adwa, I didn't come at a time when we glorified our own past. I belonged to a generation that worshipped other people's historical successes - which preempted my own little knowledge and my own people's history.

EG - What do you mean by that? Can you be more specific?

Haile - Yeah, for example as a student I knew more of Ho Chi Min and Mao and his cousins than Balcha. Even if I knew Balcha I had put Balcha in the back of my mental existence. Which made our generation de-centered or derailed. And so if I wrote a poem during my students years, my own people didn't qualify at all to be worthy of invocation, though that itself testified to the dysfunctional nature of my own political consciousness.

So to come through across Garvey and Dubois mentioning Adwa blew my mind. Even though my father had taught me about Adwa, it was only validated when other people took it as a symbol of pride for themselves. Especially Adwa, especially Menelik, Taitu. They were in the black history catalogue, in "The Crisis," in everything that was published by black people. I had come into a deformed Marxist perspective where the old, the feudal and all the ruling class were the enemy of Ethiopia. I didn't have the political wisdom to distinguish the way other societies distinguish and process their history. In other words, often successful societies do not throw the baby with the bath water. But that's what I did as a result of historical circumstances and my own historical placement of miseducation.

EG - Your father appears to be an extraordinary person who had a great influence on you. How did he become educated? How did he become a playwright in Gonder?

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