Echoes from a Sombre Empire

Echoes From a Sombre Empire (German: Echos aus einem düsteren Reich) is a documentary film by Werner Herzog about Jean-Bédel Bokassa.

Echoes From a Sombre Empire
Directed byWerner Herzog
Produced byWerner Herzog
Galeshka Moravioff
Walter Saxer
Written byWerner Herzog
StarringMichael Manuel Gustav Goldsmith
Werner Herzog
David Dacko
Jean-Bédel Bokassa (stock footage)
CinematographyJörg Schmidt-Reitwein
Martin Manz
Edited byRainer Standke
Thomas Balkenhol
Production
company
Films sans Frontières
Sera Filmproduktion
Werner Herzog Filmproduktion
Distributed byWerner Herzog Filmproduktion
Release date
1990
Running time
93 minutes
CountryGermany
France
LanguageFrench
German
English
A smoking chimpanzee in the final sequence

Unlike most of Herzog's documentaries, the main body of the film does not provide any narration or commentary by Herzog himself. Instead, the film follows journalist Michael Goldsmith as he revisits the Central African Republic, where he was imprisoned and tortured by Bokassa's regime. Goldsmith interviews two of Bokassa's wives, several of Bokassa's children (including the "true" daughter Martine), two of Bokassa's lawyers, and Central African Republic President David Dacko. Bokassa himself appears only in stock footage.

Goldsmith was working as a French journalist when he was imprisoned after reporting on Bokassa's elaborate coronation. In the film, he says that he had written his report and used a telex machine to send it to his employer. There was a power failure during the transmission, causing the text to become jumbled. The message was intercepted by the government of the CAE, who decided that it was a coded message, and that Goldsmith was a South African spy. Goldsmith was taken to a prison, where he says that he was beaten personally by Bokassa, almost to death.

Production

Herzog wished to interview Bokassa himself, who was in prison during the making of the film. The film crew obtained official permission from then-president André Kolingba, and Bokassa was reportedly willing to give the interview. Just before going to the prison, however, Herzog and the film crew were arrested and expelled from the country by the Minister of the Interior.[1]

The film begins with Herzog reading a statement from Goldsmith, who had disappeared in Liberia during its first civil war between the film's shooting and its completion. The statement describes a dream that Goldsmith has, accompanied by images of the migration of the Christmas Island red crab. Herzog again used imagery from the crab migration in his later film Invincible.

References
  1. Herzog, Werner (2001). Herzog on Herzog. Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-20708-1.


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