Documentary and the Legacies of Colonialism:
Images, Institutions, and Economies
Organized by Joshua Malitsky and Marissa Moorman
Selections of Indian Colonial and Post-Colonial Films
Curated by Priya Jaikumar
September 15 – Thursday – 3:30 p.m.
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Program will be announced from the stage
Afrique, je’te plumerai (Africa, I will fleece you) (1992) Directed by Jean-Marie Teno
September 15 – Thursday – 7:00 p.m.
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It is 1990–thirty years after Africa’s wave of independences. The end of the Cold War and the dramatic political changes taking place around the world inspire a generation of young Africans to take to the streets to challenge the one-party state and its attendant nepotism, corruption and economic failure. In a daring free style construction, Afrique, je te plumerai mixes past and present, establishing a link between yesterday's colonial experience and today's violence and corruption in Cameroon, the only African country colonized by three European powers. In French with English subtitles. (Digital. 88 min. Not Rated.)
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A Q&A with filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno will follow the film.
Sawyer Seminar Lecture: Documentary and the Long Twentieth Century
Lee Grieveson
September 16 – Friday – 9:00 a.m.
Lee Grieveson is Director of the Graduate Program in Film Studies at University College London. He is the author of The Cinema and the Wealth of Nations, and co-editor of Empire and Film and Film and the End of Empire. In this lecture, Grieveson will address the formation of documentary as a genre under the expansion of the British liberal imperial state. In doing so, he will address state and corporate uses of non-fiction cinema in the United States, including those that sought to modernize economic practices. After outlining how the genre was used to spread capitalist imperialism by shaping the conduct of populations to support economic development, Grieveson will question the limits and potentials of documentary as a problematic tool in the fight against global inequality.
Sawyer Seminar Lecture: Filmed Space and State Space in Documentary Cinema
Priya Jaikumar
September 16 – Friday – 11:00 a.m.
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Priya Jaikumar is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. She is author of Cinema at the End of Empire: A Politics of Transition in Britain and India, 1927-47 and has published essays on Indian cinema, transnational feminism, film policy, film and geography, postcolonial cinema and colonial cinema. In this lecture, Jaikumar will illustrate how The Films Division of India, an organization established in 1948 by India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, produced documentaries and educational shorts to shape the social, political, and ideological imaginaries of its viewers. Since the state is both a spatial and spatializing entity, she will argue that analyzing the use of space in these films and others will give historiographers another way of examining how colonial and national state powers create environments that are conducive to institutional stability and longevity.
Mueda, memória e massacre (Mueda, memory and massacre) (1981) Directed by Ruy Guerra
September 16 – Friday – 1:30 p.m.
Billed as the first Mozambican full-length feature, this film operates on and through the ambivalences of documentary and fiction, history and memory. Filmmaker Ruy Guerra, born in Mozambique and raised in Brazil, returns to film a popular re-enactment of the Mueda massacre of 1960 in which nearly 600 Makonde villagers were murdered by the Portuguese. The massacre is connected to the beginning of the national liberation struggle in 1964. (In Portuguese and Makonde with English subtitles, 77 minutes)
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A Q&A with Chicago-based anti-apartheid/Southern African activist Prexy Nesbitt will follow the film.
Sawyer Seminar Roundtable: Nonfiction Cinema and Colonialism
September 16 – Friday – 4:00 p.m.
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This roundtable will include Joshua Malitsky (Cinema and Media Studies, the Media School), Gregory Waller (Cinema and Media Studies, the Media School), Michael Dodson (History), Michael Martin (Black Film Center/Archive, Cinema and Media Studies), and Susan Seizer (Anthropology).
