UNDER THE WHITE MASK: THE FILM THAT HAESAERTS COULD HAVE MADE – SOUS LE MASQUE BLANC: LE FILM QU’HAESAERTS AURAIT PU RÉALISER
Matthias De Groof | Belgium 2020 | 9 Min. | OmeU
19.05. | 6pm
Votiv Kino, Gr. Saal | TICKETS
together with BLACK PRESIDENT
PART OF THE GUEST PROGRAMME CURATED BY KATARINA HEDRÉN
Austrian Premiere
Belgian artist Paul Haesaert’s colonialist film Under the Black Mask premiered at the 1958 World Fair. UNDER THE WHITE MASK deconstructs and reinterprets this cinematic irritation from the past through Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism. The masks that were once reduced to aesthetic objects for Western knowledge, now speak Césaire’s text in Lingala and denounce: “Europe is morally unjustifiable!”
UNDER THE WHITE MASK resembles a staccato of a manifesto of resistance and holds up a mirror to the European continent and its historicity. A film that interrogates historically grown attributions of Other and self.
Director: Matthias De Groof
Screenplay: Matthias De Groof
Camera: Art et Cinema
Editing: Matthias De Groof, Neel Cockx
Sound Design: Neel Cockx
Voice: Maravilha Munto
Producer: Daniel De Valck (Cobra Films)
presented by
SCREENINGS
MAS | Museum aan de Stroom. Belgium (2020)
Sheffield Doc/Fest. UK (2021)
Short Waves Film Festival | Spotlight: Kino Rebelde. Poland (2021)
Afrika Filmfestival. Belgium (2021)
Olhar de Cinema Curitiba International Film Festival. Brazil (2021)
Doclisboa International Film Festival. Portugal (2021)
Arica Nativa Rural Film Festival. Chile (2021)
BREEDBEELD Kortfilmfestival. Belgium (2021)
Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival. Brazil (2021)
BOGOSHORTS Festival. Colombia (2021)
BIOGRAPHY
Matthias De Groof (1981) Belgium. Filmmaker and scholar. His awardwinning films have been presented at venues like the IFFR, Cannes Pan- African Film Festival, Le FIFA and the Berlinale. His edited book “Lumumba in the Arts” is published with Leuven University Press, and reached the top- 100 “books to escape the news” (LitHub). He has held appointments at the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts; the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies; the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence of the Bayreuth University; and the Waseda University in Tokyo. Throughout is artistic and academic career, he was granted fellowships by the Canon Foundation, the KONE Foundation, Fulbright and BAEF.
FILMOGRAPHY
Under the White Mask: the film that Haesaerts could have made(2020)
Palimpsest of the Africa Museum” (2019)
Lobi Kuna (2018)
Diorama(2018)
Jerusalem, the Adulterous Wife (2008)
