Equatorial
Guinea, West Africa: the world's newest, least understood oil
state ...
A failed coup attempt
... a British mercenary in a grim African prison ... a president
accused by the West of torture ... and beneath it all, a spectacular
underwater oil reserve that the world's major powers would love
to get their hands on.
It may sound like fiction
but it's the real-life intrigue behind BLACK BEACH: Simon
Mann's African Coup, for BBC4's Storyville, PBS/WNET, BBC
Worldwide and VPRO Holland. Researched and filmed over eighteen
months, the film offers a unique look inside a country that rarely
allows in foreign media.
The story begins in 2003,
when a group of mercenaries, headed by ex SAS officer Simon Mann,
plan to invade Equatorial Guinea and steal its oil. Rightly or
wrongly, they believe they have the backing of Western governments
and are doing what the great powers secretly want. If they succeed,
they expect to be as rich as the country's president,Teodoro
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has magnificent palaces paid for with
oil money and a $50 million jet. But they fail.
When Mann is sentenced
to 34 years in Equatorial Guinea's Black Beach jail, he claims
to be part of a Western plot to grab the country's vast oil resources.
The film travels from South Africa to Spain, from London to Washington,
to find out if Western countries knew about the coup in advance
and if so why they did nothing to stop it.
Hungry for African resources,
China takes advantage of Obiang's rift with the US. A new capital
city rises from the jungle, built by the Chinese. Obiang expertly
plays East against West. The winners in the affair are not the
mercenaries or the Western countries that turned a blind eye,
but Obiang and his new best friends the Chinese. BLACK BEACH
sheds light on the uncomfortable realities of 21st century oil
politics.
Making the film ...
US/UK/Irish/Canadian press: "Wonderfully
made - crisp, fast, thrilling from start to finish but thoughtful
and thought provoking, in the spirit of the best documentaries
... as exciting as any Hollywood movie ... the best programme
of the week ... meticulous analysis ... a masterclass in storytelling
... a big, intriguing documentary."
Twitter ...
A
A Gill, London Sunday Times:
The
best programme of the week was Black Beach: Simon Mann’s African
Coup,
from the increasingly fine Storyville documentary strand. Mann’s
is the interview everyone wants, and it was unclear when this
one was made. While he was still in prison, or after his pardon?
I assume before his return to England, because there is no film
of him here, and he’s still eagerly ratting on his mates
and self-justifying. But it doesn’t really matter, because
this documentary was much more an exposé of Equatorial
Guinea than of the flaccid “wonga coup”. But it revolved
around Mann, so let’s start with him.
A strange
bloke, a minimalist, someone who copes by making everything smaller,
by pretending troubles are negligible and consequences unimportant.
He talks about a gentlemanly coup; the only thing that was bigged
up was the money, the gain and Mark Thatcher’s responsibility.
Every public school dorm has a miserable child like Mann in it,
someone who has to cope with the constant dull pain of unhappiness
by simply pretending it’s not there, or not very important.
They talk like characters from John Buchan novels, chuckling
with an exaggerated insouciance. It fools only Americans, and
themselves.
Mann’s
inability to find the emotion or the language to match the powerless
result of his grubby and immoral enterprise was telling and pathetic.
This was a man who had a son he’d never seen, might never
see; who had caused the torture and anguish of men who trusted
him. Yet still he was more concerned with the light delivery
of Wodehousian platitudes. There was one moment when he said
that the hard thing, the moral thing, would have been to call
off the whole shooting match, but he wasn’t able to do that,
he wasn’t that brave. So there he was, a weak fact-dodger
with a hernia.
The
rest of the story was far more exciting — the sorry state
of Equatorial Guinea: its vast oil wealth; the family who have
run it with witchcraft, Catholicism and cruelty; the American
oil companies, with their easy bribery and stomach-churning flattery;
the banks who greased it; the buccaneering greed of the Chinese.
While, all along, the constant poverty of the Guineans hasn’t
changed, and the standard of healthcare and education has actually
fallen since the oil bonanza.
You
realise that Mann and his Gilbert-and-Sullivan army and Mark
Thatcher were hopeless amateur stooges; all the others dabbling
in this benighted country were far more frightening and professional
mercenaries than Mann and his wild ducklings. They were old Africa
hands playing old colonial games when everyone else has moved
on. The time when dull white adventurers can scamper around Africa
collecting barroom anecdotes and thick livers has long gone.
Mann was lucky to get away with his telltale lily-white skin.
Postcolonial Africa could eat him for breakfast; in Equatorial
Guinea, quite literally.
Editor
Edward
Radford Archive Research Alex Buxton Consultants Mark
Hollingsworth Alex Yearsley Camera Jeremy Pollard (Equatorial
Guinea) Andrew James (South Africa) Elliot Klayman (USA) Camera
Assistant (Equatorial Guinea) Nathan Kendall Senior Associate
Producer Michael Chrisman For Fresh One Production
Manager Isabel Davis Head of Operations Jo Ralling
Executive Producer Roy Ackerman For BBC Storyville Executive
Producer Greg Sanderson Series Editor Nick Fraser
For WNET Wide Angle Story Producer Jeff Seelbach Senior
Producer Nina Chaudry Executive Producer Tom Casciato
For VPRO Executive Producers Jos de Putter, Doke Romejin
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