Matata by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (DRC, 2019, 37 min.)
But whose image? Whose power? Whose bodies?
My history hinges on severed hands. And on photographs taken by missionaries who wanted to abolish slavery even as they believed we were inferior to them.
My history hinges on the world believing that I will forever be hopeless and helpless. That I embody suffering.
Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Dance.
Photography. Image. Power. Violence.
Bodies.
I am Congo a reality of fiction
What I embody, I believe, is elemental. It is water, earth, fire, air. Dance. It is Ejo-Lobi. 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.
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo is an award-winning filmmaker and educator from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His multi-genre artistic works are acclaimed for their provocative Afrofuturistic artistic style, which engages historical content to address contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues. He is founder and Artistic Director of the Yole!Africa cultural center and of the Congo International Film Festival, he also teaches and consults regularly for international organizations addressing social and political inequity among youth 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.
