Talk:Armand Denis

A fact from Armand Denis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 May 2008, and was viewed approximately 583 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Belgian filmmaker Armand Denis, who became famous for his wildlife documentaries with his wife Michaela in the 1950s, began his career working as a scientist and inventor?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/May.

Wikipedia

Animals Magazine

Armand Denis was the editor-in-chief of Animals Magazine first published in January 1963 by Purnell and Sons; patrons Sir Julian Huxley and Sir Solly Zuckerman. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.23.149.113 (talk) 09:12, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've added a reference for that - but it's a rather poor quality reference and if anyone has a better one it would be good to add it. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:27, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rwanda tribes

From All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace:

In the 1930s, Armand Denis made films that told the world about Africa. However, his documentary gave fanciful stories about Rwanda's Tutsis being a noble ruling elite originally from Egypt, whereas the Hutus were a peasant race. In reality, they were racially the same, and the Belgian rulers had ruthlessly exploited the myth. But when it came to independence, liberal Belgians felt guilty, and decided the Hutus should overthrow the Tutsi rule. This led to a bloodbath, as the Tutsis were then seen as aliens and were slaughtered.

--Error (talk) 02:22, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've got the wrong link there - the title of Brautigan's book of verse gave its name to a series of documentaries by Adam Curtis, where this claim was made. According to this blog:

Then comes the story of one of the deadliest myths of modern times, the idea — created by by Armand Denis, another documentarian, in the 1930‘s that the Hutus and the Tutsis of Rwanda were virtually different species of humans, with the Tutsi the superior people, perhaps descendants of the ancient Egyptians, while the Hutus were an inferior and native peasantry. The Belgians set the myth in place, then encouraged the first of the bloody wars between two cultures when their colonial regime departed in 1962, though both were, in fact, indigenous.

The claim is included in the WP article about the series - but lacks a reliable source. If we are to include in the article the claim that Denis was (at least in part) responsible for a "myth" about the relationship between Hutu and Tutsi, we need a better source, I think. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:14, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]