Susana de Sousa Dias, Eric Baudelaire
Fordlandia Malaise and Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images
1
February 2024
1
Feb
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
Fordlandia Malaise and Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images
Susana de Sousa Dias, Eric Baudelaire
1
February 2024
1
February
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks. In collaboration with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. In this inaugural season we have selected films that approach the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
See the full Seventh Cinema Season 1 program here.
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Fordlandia Malaise (2019), 40 minutes, directed by Susana de Sousa Dias
Fordlandia Malaise is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rainforest in 1928. His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less then a decade.
Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times (20th and 21st centuries), between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.
Although Fordlandia is well-known due to the short lasting Fordian period, one must not forget the history either before or after.
Giving voice to the inhabitants who claim the right to write their own story and reject the ghost town label, Fordlandia Malaise blends together archive imagery, drone footage, tales and narratives, myths and songs.
ϟ
Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images (2011), 66 minutes, directed by Eric Baudelaire
Who are May and Fusako Shigenobu? Fusako – leader of an extremist left-wing faction, the Japanese Red Army, involved in a number of terrorist operations – has been hiding in Beirut for almost 30 years. May, her daughter, born in Lebanon, only discovered Japan at the age of twenty-seven, after her mother’s arrest in 2000. And Masao Adachi? A screenwriter and radical activist filmmaker, committed to armed struggle and the Palestinian cause, was also underground in Lebanon for several decades before being sent back to his native country. In his years as a film director, he had been one of the instigators of a ‘theory of landscape’ – fûkeiron: through filming landscapes, Adachi sought to reveal the structures of oppression that underpin and perpetuate the political system. Anabasis? The name given, since Xenophon, to wandering, circuitous homeward journeys. It is this complicated, dark, and always suspenseful story that Éric Baudelaire – an artist renowned for using photography as a means of questioning the staging of reality – chose to bring forth using the documentary format. Filmed on Super 8mm, and in the manner of fûkeiron, contemporary panoramas of Tokyo and Beirut are blended in with archival footage, TV clips and film excerpts as backdrop for May and Adachi’s voices and memories. They speak of everyday life, of being a little girl in hiding, of exile, politics and cinema, and their fascinating overlap. All of which adds up not so much to an enquiry as a fragmented anamnesis.
- Jean-Pierre Rehm, FID Marseille festival catalog
Image Description: This image is a black and white film still from Forlandia Maise with a central power pole and a garment draping from a small wooden board nailed across it, giving the impression of a Christian cross.
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks. In collaboration with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. In this inaugural season we have selected films that approach the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
See the full Seventh Cinema Season 1 program here.
ϟ
Fordlandia Malaise (2019), 40 minutes, directed by Susana de Sousa Dias
Fordlandia Malaise is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rainforest in 1928. His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less then a decade.
Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times (20th and 21st centuries), between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.
Although Fordlandia is well-known due to the short lasting Fordian period, one must not forget the history either before or after.
Giving voice to the inhabitants who claim the right to write their own story and reject the ghost town label, Fordlandia Malaise blends together archive imagery, drone footage, tales and narratives, myths and songs.
ϟ
Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images (2011), 66 minutes, directed by Eric Baudelaire
Who are May and Fusako Shigenobu? Fusako – leader of an extremist left-wing faction, the Japanese Red Army, involved in a number of terrorist operations – has been hiding in Beirut for almost 30 years. May, her daughter, born in Lebanon, only discovered Japan at the age of twenty-seven, after her mother’s arrest in 2000. And Masao Adachi? A screenwriter and radical activist filmmaker, committed to armed struggle and the Palestinian cause, was also underground in Lebanon for several decades before being sent back to his native country. In his years as a film director, he had been one of the instigators of a ‘theory of landscape’ – fûkeiron: through filming landscapes, Adachi sought to reveal the structures of oppression that underpin and perpetuate the political system. Anabasis? The name given, since Xenophon, to wandering, circuitous homeward journeys. It is this complicated, dark, and always suspenseful story that Éric Baudelaire – an artist renowned for using photography as a means of questioning the staging of reality – chose to bring forth using the documentary format. Filmed on Super 8mm, and in the manner of fûkeiron, contemporary panoramas of Tokyo and Beirut are blended in with archival footage, TV clips and film excerpts as backdrop for May and Adachi’s voices and memories. They speak of everyday life, of being a little girl in hiding, of exile, politics and cinema, and their fascinating overlap. All of which adds up not so much to an enquiry as a fragmented anamnesis.
- Jean-Pierre Rehm, FID Marseille festival catalog
Susana de Sousa Dias
Susana de Sousa Dias was born in Lisbon, Portugal. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts/ Video, an MPhil in Aesthetics and Art Philosophy, a BA in Fine Arts-Painting, and a BA in Cinema. She studied music at the National Conservatory. Among her cinematic works are "Natureza Morta - Visages d’une dictature" (2005, Atalanta award, Merit Prize Taiwan IDF), "48"(2009, Grand Prix Cinéma du Réel, FIPRESCI award) and Natureza Morta | Stilleben (installation, 2010). "Obscure Light" is her most recent film. She exhibited her works at international film festivals and art exhibitions worldwide (Viennale, Visions du Réel, Sarajevo IFF, Torino FF, Mar del Plata Independent FF, PhotoEspaña, Documenta, etc.). In 2012, she was honoured with a tribute by Cinéma du Réel and was guest artist at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, New York. In the same year, she formed a collective which directed the International Film Festival Doclisboa for two consecutive editions (2012 and 2013). She lectures at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Lisbon.
Eric Baudelaire
Currently based in Paris, Franco-American artist Eric Baudelaire has developed an oeuvre primarily composed of film, but which also includes photography, silkscreen prints, performance, publications and installations. In his research-based practice, the artist examines the relationship between images, past events and their documentation. Interested in the role of the cinematographic image as an index marker, Baudelaire creates narratives in which recorded facts serve as a starting point for an exploration of the unknown. In examining the changes in human behavior though interrogating the great political structures that govern the global, national and micro-communities, Baudelaire’s practice could be read through a bio-political perspective. Navigating the experience of urban living, the global, technical and economic dependencies of war, movement and the contemporary paradigm of geographical proximity and distance, Baudelaire’s practice evokes a hauntingly provocative perspective on the current political climate.
Kori Miles
Kori is an interdisciplinary and process-based takataapui artist, currently working and living on sacred Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne. They are of Maaori (Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Ahuru, Tainui/Waikato), Italian, Scottish & Anglo-Celtic descent, but born and raised in so-called Australia. They predominantly utilise performance, installation, sculpture, photography, video and poetry as mediums to explore/articulate ideas, knowledge and stories.
Kori’s practice is guided by the stories of Maaui—the trickster demigod of Maaori mythology—and how Maaui’s clever wit combined with the powers of shape-shifting and interdimensional travel are used to undermine structural authority and cause a paradigm shift in power distribution - a social and systemic change that benefits those with less privilege and access. Kori’s practice manifests visions that confront the ongoing damage of colonial and heteronormative social structures, whilst concurrently fostering a space for contemplation on transgression, eroticism, liberation, humour, healing, regeneration and resilience.