Educational Media Reviews Online

The discovery of gold within the hillside of Diasso in the western African nation of Burkina Faso led to a swarm of prospectors to immediately turn the region into a shamble-house village. Driven by unemployment, many came with designs to get rich overnight. While this film does indeed illustrate the dangerous, unregulated working conditions of the prospectors, it mainly focuses on the social dynamics, corruption, and leveraging among the gold seekers. While a few find fortunes, all too often these people spent their riches as quickly as they found them. As one brilliantly states in one of the documentary’s many interviews, “the gold owns them” not the other way around. The audience is given an account of how the “institutions” of loaning, gambling, prostitution, price gauging of medicine, etc. develop in this environment of both excess and poverty. The film makers conclude by demonstrating this sad cycle. As the gold is depleted from Diasso, the prospectors and all of their property quickly move to the next strike.

Hillside Crowd is an outstanding work, that deeply probes the lives and motivations of the denizens of this decrepit boom town, and in so doing, examines the larger issues of temptation, greed, and organized exploitation brought on by gold exploration in Africa. Though the film has many quality interviews, there is very little narration and explanatory text. That aside, the film skillfully lets the people tell the story of how the malignancies of the makeshift gold mines besiege the “The Land of Upright People.”

Awards

Winner, Best Documentary, Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2009