The Colonial Dream – Autonomous Zones Programm/Programme ...

5 - Colonial Dream 1
Montag, 28. Mai/Monday, 28 May 2007
15 – 18 Uhr/3 pm – 6 pm
Mother Dao – The Turtlelike, Vincent Monnikendam, NL, 1995, 90'
Unfolding without narration, Mother Dao, the Turtlelike is a spare and elegant film constructed entirely
from archival footage... Luminous nitrate images are set against a simple soundtrack of birdcalls, bells and
murmuring voices, punctuated occasionally by native poems and songs. The film's careful construction
reveals the face of systematic colonization and the effect of economic expansion on a culture.
Oriente Medio, Destacados de 1947, News & Flashes, USA, 1947, 12'
The UN votes to partition Palestine. Riots in the face of the partition of Palestine. The Suez Canal is
handed over to Egypt after 72 years of Brittish control. Incidents on the Israel-Egypt border. The Egyptian
Crisis. Israel withdraws from Sinai. For decades, Movietone was one of the major international news
broadcasting agencies. It shaped the collectve imaginary, created by the mass media, of a large crosssection
of Americans and Europeans.
Je vous ai compris, Jean Pierre Gambarotta, no-zone, 2006, 15'
1958 General De Gaulle pronunces – in a very convulse and tragic moment for an Argelia under rigorous
represion and torture – its famous and demagogic “Je vous ai Compris” (I understand you). A reading on
several audiovisual documents of that time gives to us an opposite meaning to that sentence. “Je vous ai
Compris” now means and show us the real sense of the civilizational work of the western powers. Today
so enthusiaticly renovated.
Una cruz en la selva: Guinea, Jean Pierre Gambarotta, no-zone, 2006, 31'
An Archives research and edit on several audiovisual documents from various sources dealing with the
old Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, most of it created for information and educational purposes.
Images that illustrate the colonial obsessions of the times: the idyllic image of Spain’s civilizing task,
nostalgia for imperial times, the sadistic element in the hunt for wild animals, the work of Christianisation,
the militarization of a layer of the population in order to ensure the existence of “loyal natives”, the
perpetuation of the African stereotype.
6 - Colonial Dream
Montag, 28. Mai/Monday, 28 May 2007
20 – 21:30 Uhr/8 pm – 9:30 pm
Afrique 50, Renè Vautier, F, 1950, 25'
An anticolonial film about colonial repression on the Ivory coast. A virulent attack on the French colonial
system after the second world war that has been banned in France for half a century.
Les Maîtres Fous, Jean Rouch, France, 1954, 35'
Les Maitres Foux is about the ceremony of a religious sect, the Hauka, which was widespread in West
Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hauka participants were usually rural migrants from Niger who came
to cities such as Accra in Ghana (then Gold Coast), where they found work as labourers in the city's
lumber yards, as stevedores at the docks, or in the mines. There were at least 30,000 practicing Hauka in
Accra in 1954 when Jean Rouch was asked by a small group to film their annual ceremony During this
ritual, which took place on a farm a few hours from the city, the Hauka entered trance and were
possessed by various spirits associated with the Western colonial powers: the governor general, the
engineer, the doctor's wife, the wicked major, the corporal of the guard.