Orality, documentary, intertextual performance and discursive practices: A reading of Ye Wonz Maibel (Deluge) 1997 by Salem Mekuria

This article offers a reading of Salem Mekuria’s Ye Wonz Maibel (Deluge), a documentary on the Red Terror in Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mekuria’s film critiques notions of objective and scientific truth on which patriarchal nation states and revolutionary rhetoric often depend. Mekuria does this by using a genre most associated with objectivity and truth – the documentary. Mekuria uses the film as an avenue to get herself and her subjects to actively perform their thinking through of the traumatic events. The process of active introspection allows Mekuria and her subjects to question official accounts of the events. In presenting her subjects’ voices Mekuria challenges the binary victim/oppressor using the notion of the African palaver, and other oral traditions such as sem-enna warq (wax and gold), a major influence in Ethiopian creative expressions. She offers Deluge as a model for participatory intervention and as a discursive and mediational performance.