One Paragraph Movie Review: The Mad Masters

Three hundred and forty-first film: Les Maitres Fous (The Mad Masters), a 1955 documentary short film that shows a ritual performed by Ghanaian men in which they go into a trance and become possessed by the spirits of their British oppressors. It’s bizarre — sometimes silly, sometimes disturbing, sometimes violent, and sometimes a chicken and a dog don’t survive. There’s a bit of foaming at the mouth, some fake wooden guns, makeshift buildings and props, and ceremonial characters like “the doctor’s wife”, “the corporal” and “the governor”. The whole point, or at least the point that most of the short film’s reviewers have made, is that however horrible white Westerners think the ritual is, the ritual is imitating white Westerners. So suck on THAT, us. One way that oppressed people can scrape some power back is to make fun of the oppressors, and writing this in November 2024 I reckon comedy worldwide is about to get very, very specific. Anyway, odd, short, to-the-point. Two and a half red sashes of authority out of five.