The film Fordlandia Malaise deals with the memory and present of Fordlandia (Brazil). Henry Ford had the company town built in the Amazon rainforest in 1928. His ambition was to end the British rubber monopoly by using raw material from Brazil for the car production in the United States. The city’s remains represent a lasting material legacy. They are a marker signaling the failure of a neo-colonial plantation project that lasted less than a decade. The documentary situates Fordlandia as a space of multilayered temporalities and in/visibilities: In the architectures of steel, glass and stone, extractivist utopias and dystopias of the 20th and 21st centuries overlap, having protracting effects on indigenous populations living there. Giving voice to the inhabitants who claim the right to write their own story and reject the ghost town label, Fordlandia Malaise blends together archival imagery, drone footage, tales and narratives, myths and songs.

Following the film screening, Susana de Sousa Dias, director of the film and scholar of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, and Robert Stock (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) will reflect on what characterizes this film and this type of documentary.

Fordlandia Malaise, Portugal 2019, D: Susana de Sousa Dias, 40 min., Portuguese original with English subtitels

© Susana de Sousa Dias, Kintop

Termin und Ort

Dienstag, 10.10.2023
18.00 h
Simón-Bolívar-Saal

Sprache

Deutsch

Kooperationspartner

Exzellenzcluster „Matters of Activity. Image Space Material“ der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD

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