Honestly, if questions about unequal power differentials, decolonization, and post- or neo-colonialism preoccupy your mind even a little, whether you are a filmmaker or not–but particularly if you are–quite frankly, you cannot miss the opportunity to watch this film.

Joris Postema had a certain kind of courage (perhaps he didn’t have a choice?) to ask questions that concern the representation of the Other, cultures that are not one’s own, as well as one-way cultural constructions, in a very direct way. And yet, we continue to write, in the film’s synopsis, that the filmmaker gave voice to Africans from the Congo; he does not give them voice, they take it themselves! Listening to them shakes the structural foundations of our conditioned perceptions and it is high time that it be so.

These dynamics cannot be invisibilized in the name of freedom of expression; they need to be a crucial aspect of how we recreate our future world(s), both amongst humans and between humanity and the whole of the living world. This film is a snapshot of the very process of greening human relationships in the making of Western imagery. This film immortalises one filmmaker’s process of transformation.

Sylvie Lapointe
Filmmaker

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