Tribute to Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Part 1

Matata

This year’s program includes a tribute to Congolese filmmaker and activist Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. His multi-genre artistic works confront the history and legacy of colonial views of Africa. “Our history,” says the director about MATATA, “hinges on severed hands. And on photographs taken by missionaries who wanted to abolish slavery even as they believed we were inferior to them. Our history hinges on the world believing that we will forever be hopeless and helpless. That we embody suffering. What we embody, I believe, is elemental. It is water, earth, fire, air. Dance. It is pasts and futures. And it has power. So I rethink the clicks and flashes that have cast us in history. And I flirt with liberation from the colonial gaze.”

MATATA was screened in the Berlinale Forum Expanded program in 2020. More information about the film can be found here.

Kapita

By recoding archival footage and intertwining it with contemporary images, KAPITA exposes patterns of extraction and burial to decode colonial representations and exploitation of central African land and people and mines.

KAPITA was screened in the Berlinale Forum Expanded program in 2021. More information about the film can be found here.

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo is a filmmaker, activist, and educator. His multigenre artistic works are known for their decolonial Afrofuturistic artistic style, which engages historical content to address contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues. In 2000 he co-founded Yole!Africa and in 2005 he founded the Salaam Kivu International Film Festival. Ndaliko Katondolo teaches and consults regularly for international organizations, addressing social and political inequity among marginalized groups through culture and education.