You may be interested in the following opinion piece (620 words) about the newly released film The Four Feathers (MA 15+) – rated three stars by Evan Williams in The Australian (7-8 June, 2003, R18). Viewers deserve to know there is a very different side to the story.

…………………………………………………………………. …

Fatal flaws in Four Feathers

Some of the most fascinating films in recent years have depicted historical events. A current example is The Four Feathers, a film about Sudan in the late 19th century.

The Four Feathers was directed by Shekhar Kapur, best known for his 1998 film Elizabeth. Audiences loved it but historians were less enthusiastic. Likewise, viewers of The Four Feathers should be warned that this film is more about Kapur’s anti-colonial agenda than it is about truth.

Sudan historian Peter Hammond of South Africa said he was eager to see The Four Feathers, set in the dramatic years of 1884 to 1885 when General Charles Gordon was being besieged in Khartoum. “A tremendous amount of heroism was displayed by British forces in the Sudan, as the film so effectively shows,” he said.

But despite the film’s many positive features, Peter Hammond was bitterly disappointed. General Gordon was in Khartoum on a mission to end the Islamic slave trade, but The Four Feathers does not even mention this basic fact – nor the primary British goal of justice and freedom for the Sudanese.

The Sudanese slave trade continues even today. Arab traders from the north are raiding villages in the south occupied by people from the dark-skinned, largely Christian Dinka tribes, killing the men and carrying off the women and children into slavery. The United Nations and Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer have condemned the trade in human lives – but little has been done to stop it.

Many people know that William Wilberforce stood out among British statesmen in his long battle to outlaw slavery – first from Britain itself, and then throughout the empire. In the latter half of the 19th century, the British government dedicated their navy and military to the eradication of the slave trade worldwide.

The Four Feathers suggests that the British forces went to Sudan for “the empire”. However Sudan was never part of the British Empire, although it later became a British protectorate. The primary reason for British involvement in Sudan was to eradicate the slave trade there. General Charles Gordon had succeeded in setting many slaves free, but was then faced with a great rebellion by Muslim slave traders led by the Mahdi.

Sudan’s capital city Khartoum had been built on the twin evils of slave and ivory trading. By the time General Gordon went to Sudan, seven out of every eight black Dinkas were slaves. The River Nile was being used as a slavery highway by raiders who pillaged tribes from equatorial Africa.

The Four Feathers shows the tremendous public enthusiasm for the British force sent to relieve General Gordon, but does not mention that this overwhelming support was due to the General’s anti-slavery work.

Another fatal flaw in the film was its depiction of the overwhelming British victory at Abu Klea as a British defeat. On 17 January 1885 a small British relief column, made up largely of the Camel Corps, smashed the Mahdi’s force of 10,000 Dervishes.

There were many other departures from history – including the strange portrayal of the black Sudanese hero Abou, who helped Harry, as a Muslim. “If he was a Muslim,” Peter Hammond asks, “why did he oppose the Mahdi? It is outrageous that The Four Feathers found it impossible to portray the dynamic Christian faith of the black Christians in Sudan, but chose to restrict religious devotion to the Muslims.”

Today Australia is a refuge for some black Sudanese Christians who have managed to escape the continuing terror in their homeland. Over two million people have been killed and many thousands have been enslaved in a jihad which has waged for decades.

Oh for a blockbuster film which tells the truth!

ROSLYN PHILLIPS

Mrs Roslyn Phillips, B Sc Dip Ed Research Officer, Festival of Light Australia