Goodbye Uncle Tom

Goodbye Uncle Tom
Japanese DVD cover
Directed by	Gualtiero Jacopetti Franco Prosperi
Produced by	Gualtiero Jacopetti Franco Prosperi
Written by	Gualtiero Jacopetti Franco Prosperi English Version: Gene Luotto
Music by	Riz Ortolani
Cinematography	Claudio Cirillo Antonio Climati Benito Frattari
Edited by	Gualtiero Jacopetti Franco Prosperi
Production company	Euro International Film
Distributed by	Euro International Film (Italy) Cannon Film Distributors (US)
Release date	30 September 1971
Running time	136 minutes (Italian Version) 123 minutes (English Version)
Country	Italy
Language	Italian English

Goodbye Uncle Tom (Italian: Addio Zio Tom) is a 1971 Italian film directed by Mondo film documentary directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi with music by Riz Ortolani. The film is based on true events in which the filmmakers explore antebellum America, using period documents to examine in graphic detail the racist ideology and degrading conditions faced by Africans under slavery. Because of the use of published documents and materials from the public record, the film labels itself a documentary, though all footage is re-staged using actors. Though the film is presented as a documentary, it is more of a historical drama or docudrama because of its fantasy framing device of the directors travelling back in time combined with the re-staging of historical events.

The film was shot primarily in Haiti, where directors Jacopetti and Prosperi were treated as guests of Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. Duvalier supported the filmmakers by giving them diplomatic cars, clearance to film anywhere on the island, as many extras as they required, and even a nightly dinner with Duvalier himself. Hundreds of Haitian extras participated in the film's various depictions of the cruel treatment of slaves, as well as white actors portraying historical characters (including Harriet Beecher Stowe).

The directors' cut of Addio Zio Tom draws parallels between the horrors of slavery and the rise of the Black Power Movement, represented by Eldridge Cleaver, LeRoi Jones, Stokely Carmichael, and a few others. The film ends with an unidentified man's fantasy re-enactment of William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner. This man imagines Nat Turner's revolt in the present, including the brutal murder of the whites around him, who replace the figures Turner talks about in Styron's novel as the unidentified reader speculates about Turner's motivations and ultimate efficacy in changing the conditions he rebelled against. American distributors felt that such scenes were too incendiary, and forced Jacopetti and Prosperi to remove more than thirteen minutes of footage explicitly concerned with racial politics for American and other Anglophone audiences.