With these centennial commemorations of WWI, it is sometimes forgotten that Africans played a major role in the Allied victories across Europe and Africa itself and that the war was considered at the time by many analysts as a colonial war. Yet, as colonized subjects, Africans were deployed in the thousands, taking decisive part or making victory possible in numerous battles including Marne, Ypres, Douaumont, Assevillers, Aisne, Picardie, the Somme and Verdun, fighting their way to Slovenia and Macedonia and being feted in Belgrade.
Albert Samama Chikly filmed WWI as part of the French Army Film and Photo Units (SPA and SCA) with access to the first lines of combat. Cited for displaying incredible bravery on the battlefield, in particular under enemy fire and bombs, he filmed combat, training exercises, troop arrivals, visits to the front by dignitaries (heads of state, kings, generals), and indeed African soldiers, becoming in the process one of the directors (Alfred Machin and Henri Desfontaines being others) of the film history through whom the cinematic memory of this war is accessible. Chikly’s war period also includes his work in Libya in 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, which he chose to film through the angle of Libyan resistance.

Aboubakar Sanogo