both imbues inanimate objects with life and carries out the mortification of living subjects," something she also connects to the footage of the dying gorilla. Alter further writes that as the film asserts that colonialism is responsible for the "disenchantment and demystification" of African culture, Statues Also Die "illustrates the process whereby a religious fetish is transformed into a commodity fetish by Western civilization." Production The film was commissioned from Marker by the association Présence Africaine in 1950, as Alain Resnais said in an interview in 1996. Marker, who knew Resnais, offered to make the film together, because it would be more "fun and enjoyable". Both embarked on the adventure of the chief operator Ghislain Cloquet. According to Resnais, the original intent was not to make an anticolonial film, but only a film about African art. However when the filmmakers started to do research, they were struck by the fact that African art was exhibited at the ethnological Musée de l'Homme, and not the Louvre like art from elsewhere. As research continued, the disintegrating effects of colonialism became more prominent in the filmmakers' approach to the subject. Release The film first premiered in 1953. In 1954 it received the Prix Jean Vigo. Because of the sensitive subject, the sharp criticism of colonialism urged the French National Center of Cinematography to censor the second half of the film until 1963. The first time the full version was publicly screened in France was in November 1968, as part of a program with thematically related short films, under the label "Cinéma d'inquiétude". It premiered on DVD in 2004. The filmmaker Nana Oforiatta Ayim worked on a new translation of the film with Chris Marker in 2005. See also 1953 in film Cinema of Africa Cinema of France French colonial empire French New Wave#Left Bank List of avant-garde films of the 1950s References Notes Bibliography External links 1953 films 1953 documentary films Films directed by Alain Resnais Films directed by Chris Marker 1950s French-language films French short documentary films 1950s short documentary films Documentary films about African resistance to colonialism French black-and-white films Film controversies in France 1950s French films