This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures,...
In between growing frustrations toward cleaning up after an endless parade of tourists and reflections on a traumatizing memory, a voice rises from within a soft-spoken Hawaiian janitor down on the sidewalk in Waikiki. This narrative short film is inspired by a collection of poetry published...
As children, a Mozambique native and a Portuguese colonialist were friends. Years have passed and Mozambique is fighting for its independence. Two childhood friends meet on opposing sides.
In the fifties, when the future Democratic Republic of Congo was still a Belgian colony, an entire generation of musicians fused traditional African tunes with Afro-Cuban music to create the electrifying Congolese rumba, a style that conquered the entire continent thanks to an infectious rhythm,...
The octogenarian Angono Mba recalls the expedition in which he worked as porter for the Spanish filmmaker Manuel Hernández Sanjuán who, between 1944 and 1946, traveled through Spanish Guinea documenting life in the colony as he obsessively searched for a mysterious lake.
Guillermo Gómez Álvarez explores the identity politics of Puerto Rico via archival footage from various sources that clash with nine original songs from local independent musicians and a thematic analysis from a psychoanalyst and a historian. From the juxtaposition the absurd becomes coherent and...
Tabataba tells the story of a small Malagasy village during the independence uprising which took place in 1947 in the south of the country. For several months, part of the Malagasy population revolted against the French colonial army in a bloody struggle. The repression in villages that followed...
With a forensic lens, Onyeka Igwe's A So-Called Archive interrogate the decomposing repositories of Empire. Blending footage shot over the past year in two separate colonial archive buildings - one in Lagos, Nigeria, and the other in Bristol, United Kingdom - this double portrait considers the...
Rui was raised in Mozambique in a small village at the frontier of a mysterious river. Son of Portuguese colonists, his best friend is Ana, a black girl godchild of his mother. At fourteen he is confronted with the tragic destruction of his childhood and has to learn to recognize two distinct...
A violent examination of male homosexuality in a time when it was considered taboo, where Ivano Staccioli and his lover engage in a self-destructive relationship against the background of Africa.
After numerous military operations, Major Müller can't find a way back into civilian life. Following his urge to communicate, the Major is looking for listeners and encouragement. He doesn't find either. Instead, the repeated monological memory of his own heroic deeds determines his present –...
'An instructional film made on behalf of the Department of Social Welfare, demonstrating a new technique to teach English to illiterate adult audiences in the Gold Coast. (..) This is a film with an almost entirely African cast, depicting an African teacher instructing a group of African students,...
A dramatisation of the struggles of Sheikh Haji Muhammad Saleh, known as Tuanku Tambusai (Tuanku, an honorific; Tambusai, a nameplace), against the Dutch colonialists (and their factional traditionalist Sumatran collaborators) in Sumatra, during the Padri (Priest, the Dutch moniker for Muslim...
Out of the Mist: An Alternate History of New Zealand Cinema
02015HD
Two decades on from Cinema of Unease, Tim Wong’s essay film contemplates the prevailing image of a national cinema while privileging some of the images and image-makers displaced by the popular view of filmmaking in Aotearoa. Now streaming for free at: films.lumiere.net.nz
