03—05/02/2021
online screening
African Mirror
as part of Decolonizing the Screen film review
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African Mirror
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directed by Mischa Hedinger, Switzerland 2019, 84'
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René Gardi, a Swiss documentary filmmaker, saw the residents of Cameroon as free people who ignored western perceptions of money and property. In his film material recorded in the fifties he compared them to the mountain people of his motherland. He pointed the camera at the scenes he found most fascinating; sometimes he would arrange them to look better on screen. He did not realize at the time what effect those images would eventually have.
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- African Mirror is a documentary essay made from Gardi’s archival material. We see with disturbing clarity how, over just a few decades, traditional African cultures were permanently destroyed – not only by colonialists forcing western ideas on the local population, but also by people like Gardi. His idyllic images of Africa circled the globe, turning the continent into a utopia for the European filmmakers and tourists to project their wildest fantasies onto. Now it turns out how overwhelmingly devastating this western fascination was.
