The European cinema of the origins looked at Africa as an inspiration. A lot of documentaries, movies and other works of fiction recreated on the screen the fascinating and mysterious Western myth of the "Savage Continent". Starting from Meliès’ early works, up to the movies of the years of the Second World War, the cinema of colonial countries, in particular the French, the English and the Italian one, used camera to document and portray the African "otherness", with both scientific curiosity and manifest hegemonic aims.
Keywords: European cinema on Africa, colonial cinema, images of Africa, cinema of the exotic, European culture and Africa, Africa in the movies: myth and reality