This stunning documentary which aired in a shorter 52-minute version in 2004 on classy Euro webs -- including BBC, ZDF, Arte, IKON, and VRT – premiered in North America at the 12 th Annual African Diaspora Film Festival in New York City.

This true, astonishing story of what King Leopold II did in the Congo was forgotten for over 50 years. “ Congo:White King, Red Rubber, Black Death” describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber. Families were held as hostages, starving to death if the men failed to produce enough wild rubber. Children's hands were chopped off as punishment for late deliveries. The Belgian government has denounced this documentary as a "tendentious diatribe" for depicting King Leopold II as the moral forebear of Adolf Hitler, responsible for the death of 10 million people in his rapacious exploitation of the Congo. Yet, it is agreed today that the first Human Rights movement was spurred by what happened in the Congo.

“Nick Fraser's commanding narration lends real punch to Bate's tough-minded text [in this] stunning indictment of Belgium's brutal colonization of the Congo in the late 19th century.” Robert Koehler, Variety

"(a) stunning indictment of Belgium's brutal colonization of the Congo in the late 19th century."~ VARIETY

"Evokes the ignorance of a country that would rather look up to its ugly past than down." ~ SLANT MAGAZINE

"A journey into the original “Heart of Darkness”."~ NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

CONGO : WHITE KING, RED RUBBER, BLACK DEATH *** 1/2
by Phil Hall
(2005-09-10)

2005, Un-rated, 90 Minutes, An ArtMattan Productions Release

Peter Bate's "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" is a documentary that recounts the genocide perpetrated against the people of Congo by the colonial occupation under the control of Belgium's King Leopold II. After gaining title to the land through fraudulent treaties with the African chiefs and strong-arm diplomacy among the European powers carving up Africa, Leopold II ran the so-called Congo Free State as a private fiefdom. While claiming to bring "civilization" to the Congolese, the Belgian monarch's goals were anything but benevolent.

The African people were forced into slave labor to maintain the cultivation and export of the region's rubber harvest. Those who fell behind in their labor quotas were tortured, mutilated and murdered; the wives of the laborers were frequently held prisoner and subject to rape and torture, and entire villages that rebelled against the enslavement were burned to the ground.

From the mid-1880s and lasting for nearly 40 years, an estimated 10 million Congolese were killed under the reign of Leopold II. The madness only came to an end thanks to the efforts of British journalist and humanitarian E.D. Morel, who exposed the human rights abuses in Congo and published photographs of the mutilated Congolese. In 1908, the Belgian government officially annexed Congo; Leopold II died the following year and his funeral procession was booed by the Belgian people, who grew ashamed of the outrages engineered in the king's name.

Yet time has erased the severity of this tragedy. The Belgian people adopted a policy of national amnesia. Leopold II is praised today for bringing "civilization" to Congo (ignoring the fact that the Congolese civilization goes back several centuries). The records of the financial exploitation remain a Belgian state secret to this late date. And while the Belgian royal family amassed an extraordinary fortune from its plunder of the Congo resources, it has yet to offer any official statement of remorse for the massacres which took place under Leopold II.

" Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" fills an important void in the history of Europe's disastrous encounters with Africa. Using a combination of interviews with contemporary historians and the recitation of the letters and investigative articles from the late 19th and early 20th century, the film outlines a human rights catastrophe which rivals the genocides created by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. For those who are unaware of this aspect of African history, the story will come as a toxic shock.

"Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" is a remarkable triumph of documentary filmmaking. It is impossible to walk away from this film without being jolted.

video sale: $90
DVD sale: $245
DVD also includes Bonus Documentary Boma Tervuren: The Journey
Public libraries and K-12 DVD sale: $29.95