Kapita

13.06.2021 21:30 OV Open Air Kino HKW (Tickets)

In Short Film Program #4, with:
SONGS OF THE SHIRT (5), AFTER LIFE FOLLOWED BY RED IMPASTO JAR, FATHERLAND, AHORITA FRAMES

“Ka-pi-ta” is the official job title given to Congolese charged with enforcing their white master’s bidding—through domination—over their fellow Congolese on plantations, in factories, in commerce, and other sites of capitalist extraction and production. From one perspective, this history of exploitation in Congo is well documented from the colonial era to the present. There are a wealth of images of the copper and cobalt mines that fueled the industrial revolution, of the coltan and niobium mines that fuel the electronic revolution. But even in their efforts to reveal violence, such images often render the engines of exploitation invisible. 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 the archival films for what they make invisible: the black-skinned workers evaporated by cameras calibrated to white, the collateral death and destruction interred in infrastructure. (Petna Ndaliko Katondolo)

Production Cherie Rivers Ndaliko. Production company Alkebu Film Production (Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo). Written and directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. Cinematography Emmanuel Vinywasiki Katya. Editing Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. Sound design Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. Sound Jay Safari. Production manager Ganza Buroko. Executive producer Cherie Rivers Ndaliko. With Precy Numbi (Robot), Mega Mingiedi (Chie ), Chivas Tsongo (Goat Man), Sarah Mukadi (Queen).

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, born in 1974 in Goma, Congo, is a filmmaker, activist, and educator living between his hometown and Chapel Hill, USA. His multi-genre artistic works are known for their decolonial Afrofuturistic artistic style, which engages historical content to address contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues. In 2000, he founded Yole!Africa, a non-profit organization that serves as a hub for education and social innovation for artists, civil society leaders, and journalists in the east of Congo. In 2005 he founded the Congo International Film Festival (formerly known as the Salaam Kivu International Film Festival). In addition to serving as Artistic Director of both Yole!Africa and the Congo International Film Festival, Ndaliko Katondolo also teaches and consults regularly for international organizations, addressing social and political inequity among marginalized groups through culture and education. He is currently the Artist in Residence at the Stone Center for Black History and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2020 his film MATATA was part of Forum Expanded.

Films: 2004: Théâtre Brûlé (10 min.), Lamokowang (13 min.). 2005: Threatened Fate (7 min.), Ma-dia (7 min.), Goma Capitale du Cinéma (21 min.). 2007: Pandisha Bandera (45 min.). 2008: True Story Short (13 min.). 2010: Jazz Mama (32 min.). 2012: Melting Justice (5 min.). 2013: Mabele na Biso (34 min.). 2014: Myth Eyes (3 min.). 2016: The Dead Are Not Dead (10 min.). 2019: Danze (21 min.), Matata (37 min., Forum Expanded 2020). 2020: Kapita.