Stop Filming Us

Joris Postema, NL 2020, 95 min, OmeU 

›Stop Filming Us‹ is a film that seeks to raise questions, and its approach raises new questions: What it’s about: A white Dutch filmmaker travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to meets black Congolese artists and filmmakers there. He asks them whether he – as a profiteer of colonial power relations – should even make a film in the Congo. The answers are anything but clearly positive, but the film is made. Once the filmmaker wants to know: “Did I do something neo-colonial today?” Trigger warning: He did! But has he also made a post-colonial film? Does he consciously take on the role of the naive white artist in order to demonstratively fail precisely at this point? How does the story of these encounters continue after and outside of the film? In addition to questions about the use of strategic essentialism in documentary film, we will discuss in more detail which debates the film has triggered so far.

A panel (LINK) and joint Q&A of both films will follow this film and Christian Scholz’s ›Journey Back Home‹ at 3 pm, also in the Metropolis.