Harun Farocki Institut presents
ON AFRICA, Skip Norman, FRG 1970, DCP, OV/EnS, 35 min
with Harun Farocki Institut und SAVVY Contemporary
Sep 5, 2021 18:30 Arsenal Cinema, free admission
Skip Norman shot ON AFRICA after graduating from the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB), where he was a student from 1966 to 1969. On the image we see tracking shots through West Berlin, information detailing the economic gains of colonialist exploitation, and photographs from West Africa, while the soundtrack shares facts about the continent’s conquest and decolonization. “The starting point is the relationship between Europe’s prosperity and Africa’s poverty; Europe’s destruction of societies and cultures, and the simultaneous use of Christianity and racial theories as justification for a massive exploitation of the colonized.” ON AFRICA was first shown at the Festival in Mannheim in 1970 and then broadcast on television by WDR in 1972. In the autumn of 2020, the Harun Farocki Institut was able to digitize a 16 mm print from the archive at the WDR. At “Archival Assembly #1”, the film will be discussed in a conversation with SAVVY Contemporary, preceded by a reading of selected texts by Skip Norman.
