Grada Kilomba

Conakry

Filipa César

Grada Kilomba

"Conakry" is a homage to the Guinean-Bissauan and Cape Verdean anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral. This poetic film is a single shot 16mm film staged at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and based on the archival images. The film-maker Filipa César, invited the Portuguese writer and artist Grada Kilomba and the American radio activist Diana McCarty to reflect on the images and their history, questioning what these film archive mean in a post-African liberation world.

Illusions

Grada Kilomba

Playing with the illusion of a two-layered scenario, Grada Kilomba created a silent film in which the characters move inside a white space while the artist, outside, gives voice to the images and becomes a contemporary 'Griot', complete with post-colonial urgency. "Sometimes, I feel that I live a space of timelessness," the artist narrates, "in a space where past and present seem to coincide." To explore this coexistence of times, in which the colonial past seems to interrupt the present and the present is sometimes experienced as if we were in the past, Kilomba restages the myth of Echo and Narcissus using the African oral tradition of storytelling. Narcissus becomes a metaphor for a society which has not resolved its colonial history, taking itself and its own image as the only objects of love. How do we break out of this colonial, patriarchal mould?

While I Write: Act III of The Desire Project

Grada Kilomba

With the written word as the only visual element, Grada Kilomba gives a voice to an individual who has been historically silenced by colonial narratives. "In this experimental video," the artist states, "I explore how thoughts can be associated not only with theory, but especially with sounds, movement and emotions."

Plantation Memories: Part I

Grada Kilomba

An exploration of everyday racism reveals how much this places the black subject in a colonial setting where they once again are reduced to the subordinate, exotic 'Other'. Racism allows the past to suddenly line up with the present, and the present is experienced as if one were being catapulted back into that painful past.

Plantation Memories: Part II

Grada Kilomba

An exploration of everyday racism reveals how much this places the black subject in a colonial setting where they once again are reduced to the subordinate, exotic 'Other'. Racism allows the past to suddenly line up with the present, and the present is experienced as if one were being catapulted back into that painful past.