The Angola years of Marcel Trillat

Audio 48:30

Photo from the shooting of "People's War in Angola" (1975).

Marcel Trillat is second from the left.

© Personal collection of Marcel Trillat.

By: Valérie Nivelon |

Maxime Grember

55 mins

La marche du monde

invites you to discover the Angolan archives of Marcel Trillat, journalist and major television reporter who died in September 2020.

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Between 1975 and 1977, Marcel Trillat was one of the rare French journalists to cover Angola.

His documentary

People's War in Angola

that he co-directed with Bruno Muel and Antoine Bonfanti, his articles and his testimonies make him today a witness to Angolan history.

He tells us from the inside a colonial war, but also a civil war emblematic of the cold war, unknown to the French-speaking public.

Marcel Trillat and Bruno Muel in front of the camera of director Joao Guerra Marques in 2011. © Ciné-Archives

In the spring of 1975 at the end of a war of independence of more than 14 years with Portugal, Marcel Trillat was sent with his two comrades by Unicité the production company of the PCF to train future professionals of Angolan public television and co-produce a documentary in favor of the MPLA, the independence movement supported by Cuba and the Eastern Bloc.

Two years later, in May 1977, he returned again as a trainer and witnessed an attempted coup d'état which he covered as a journalist for

L'Humanité

and French public television.

The Angola Years of Marcel Trillat

,

a new documentary from

La

Marche

du monde

, by Maxime Grember, produced by Valérie Nivelon and directed by Michaël Goncalvès to the sounds of the INA and Ciné-Archives archives.

A story crossed with the analyzes of the historian Tangui Perron (in charge of heritage at Periphery), the journalist Augusta Conchiglia and the soundtrack of Angolan music from the 70s.

An MPLA soldier interviewed by Marcel Trillat in 1975. Extract from “People's war in Angola” (Trillat, Muel and Bonfanti, 1975), © Ciné-Archives

Bibliography:

  • Birmingham David,

    History of Angola from 1820 to the present day

    , Chandeigne, 2019

  • Kapuściński Ryszard,

    From one war to another.

    Angola 1975

    , Flammarion, 2011

  • Conchiglia Augusta,

    Occulted interference in Angola

    , Le Monde diplomatique, November 2019

  • Perron Tangui,

    Portrait of Marcel Trillat

    , Story of a film, memory of a struggle # 2, Strangers Strangers, Scope-Periphery, 2009

  • Trillat Marcel,

    Return from Luanda, the diary of a failed putsch

    , L'Humanité, May 1977

Movies:

  • People's war in Angola

    (Antoine Bonfanti, Bruno Muel, Marcel Trillat, 1975)

  • A Luta Continua

    (Bruno Muel, Asdrubal Rebeleo, 1977) 

  • Marcel Trillat, portrait

    (Tangui Perron and Philippe Troyon, 2008)

Angolan music:

Bonga's

"Balumenkeno"

Bonga's

"Ghinawa"

"Lamento"

by Os Gingas

"Mumpiozzo Ame"

by Teta Lando

Urbano de Castro's

“Revolução de Angola”

"Kazukuta"

by Os Bongos

"Tchi Kolona"

by Duo Misoso

"Rumba 70"

by Os Kiezos

"Ué mua Ngola"

by Artur Nunes

"Valodia"

by Santocas

Thanks :

Jacques Bidou, Augusta Conchiglia, Catherine Dehaut, Hugo Dos Santos, Bruno Muel, Tangui Perron and Julien Trillat.

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  • Angola

  • Journalism

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