Colonial Lies. Miseducation. Haile Gerima on Black Lions, Roman Wolves #TheBlackTable

Haile Gerima's entire career, from his early films to his latest projects, exemplifies a commitment to independent cinema that actively resists colonial and Eurocentric narratives. He emphasizes controlling all aspects of filmmaking—production, distribution, and exhibition—to ensure stories are told with an authentic 'cinematic accent' and narrative logic that resonates with the community, rather than imitating Hollywood's white supremacist framework.

Gerima states, 'Is it to regurgitate and imitate white America through Hollywood that nurtured our very origin or is there another story we can offer?' and 'you don't just make a film but you know what kind film do you make and what kind of cinematic transformation are you can you you know be bring can you bring about can you also control your intellectual property? Can you also own the distribution and exhibition of your film?' He later adds, 'We want to know what is a black cinema? What is how does it feel? How does it you know uh you know how does it u uh communicate with our own community?'

Gerima's 30-year documentary, 'Black Lions, Roman Wolves,' is a profound act of historical reclamation, focusing on Ethiopia's resistance against Italian invasion. He discovered that colonial powers not only distorted the historical narrative but physically stole Ethiopian monuments and replaced them with Roman symbols, perpetuating a miseducation that even affected his own upbringing. The film uses colonial archives against themselves to expose this systematic historical theft and re-center the Ethiopian perspective.

Gerima recounts, 'I realized then the war is against uh you know Ethiop the Ethiopian the lion history the mythology of Ethiopia's history and the wolf the Roman wolf in fact they took the lion and planted it in in the middle of Rome and brought to Ethiopia the wolf and planted the wolf in Ethiopia.' He describes the film as 'a revenge on my miseducation more than anything.'

Gerima's 'Maroon Project' highlights a deliberately obscured history of enslaved Africans who resisted by running southward into Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico, often engaging in armed guerrilla warfare. This narrative contrasts with the more commonly known northward Underground Railroad, emphasizing the self-determining, armed resistance that did not rely on white involvement, offering an inspirational model of resilience and agency.

Gerima states, 'This history I felt intentionally, institutionally was blocked from it being accessible to knowledge.' He contrasts it with the 'northern underground was also, you know, uh, you know, tokenistically, uh, tolerated because it incorporates some white people. But this other one does not incorporate white people. is history makers with guns literally fighting their way in guerilla warfare all the way to Mexico.'