A So-Called Archive (2020)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 20M
Director : Onyeka Igwe
Synopsis
With a forensic lens, Onyeka Igwe's A So-Called Archive interrogate the decomposing repositories of Empire. Blending footage shot over the past year in two separate colonial archive buildings - one in Lagos, Nigeria, and the other in Bristol, United Kingdom - this double portrait considers the 'sonic shadows' that colonial images continue to generate, despite the disintegration of the memory and their materials. It mixes the genres of the radio play, the corporate video tour and detective noir, with a haunting and critical approach to the horror of discovery.
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The story, set in 1885, follows a British officer (Heath Ledger) who resigns his post when he learns of his regiment's plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers which symbolize cowardice. To redeem his honor he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves the lives of those who branded him a coward.
Sir Robert Beaumont is behind schedule on a railroad in Africa. Enlisting noted engineer John Henry Patterson to right the ship, Beaumont expects results. Everything seems great until the crew discovers the mutilated corpse of the project's foreman, seemingly killed by a lion. After several more attacks, Patterson calls in famed hunter Charles Remington, who has finally met his match in the bloodthirsty lions.
In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.
Spain, 2003. An accidental discovery leads Clarence to travel from the snowy mountains of Huesca to Equatorial Guinea, to visit the land where her father Jacobo and her uncle Kilian spent most of their youth, the island of Fernando Poo.
Bacurau, a small town in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants notice that their community has vanished from most maps.
Master Wong and his disciples enroll in the 'Dancing Lion Competition' to stop an assassination plot and to battle an arrogant, deceitful opponent.
A drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century.
In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.
The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.
Amidst turmoil and racial conflict in a Francophone African state, a white French woman fights for her coffee crop, her family and ultimately for her life.
In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership.
The true story of Saartjes Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.
The professional mercenary Sir William Walker instigates a slave revolt on the Caribbean island of Queimada in order to help improve the British sugar trade. Years later he is sent again to deal with the same rebels that he built up because they have seized too much power that now threatens British sugar interests.
In 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński, a veteran Polish journalist, embarked on a seemingly suicidal road trip into the heart of the Angola's civil war. There, he witnessed once again the dirty reality of war and discovered a sense of helplessness previously unknown to him. Angola changed him forever: it was a reporter who left Poland, but it was a writer who returned…
A young French woman returns to the vast silence of West Africa to contemplate her childhood days in a colonial outpost in Cameroon. Her strongest memories are of the family's houseboy, Protée — a man of great nobility, intelligence and beauty — and the intricate nature of relationships in a racist society.
In 1936 Italy, Elio returns home from Africa with a present for his wife in the form of Zerbal (Laura Gemser), the daughter of a tribal king. Unbeknown to him, his neglected wife Alessandra (Lili Carati) has formed a relationship with Elio’s otherwise frigid secretary Velma (Annie Belle) who is less than pleased at Elio’s return
Vietnam, 1954. An American reporter finds himself in the middle of the battle of Điện Biên Phủ, between the French army and the Vietminh.
When Jarah loses her husband, her child, her land and her innocence she embarks on a brutal journey of of retribution and revenge that transforms into redemption and reconciliation.
Short documentary ordered by the magazine "Présence Africaine". From the question "Why is the african in the Human museum while Greek or Egyptian art are in Le Louvre?", the two directors expose and criticise the lack of consideration for African art. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.
