Focus: Learning and Unlearning Film – Decolonising Cinema

Focus: Learning and Unlearning Film – Decolonising Cinema

Across the history of cinema and through all film lengths and formats, we address urgent discourses in the FOCUS section of our programme. In 2025, we begin the exploration of our colonial past and its ongoing impact right up to the present day. Which images speak of the crimes of colonialism and the racist structures intertwined within it, without perpetuating them? Can cinematic perspectives disrupt established narratives and provoke deeper conversations about our colonial legacies? We will showcase and discuss empowering works from 120 years of film history, from early silent movies to contemporary productions, and in doing so form alliances with transnational stakeholders. Together, they will deconstruct images and sounds and decolonise the white gaze in cinema.

The programme features films by Mojisola Adebayo, Milisuthando Bongela, Sylvaine Dampierre, Julie Dash, Terry Francis, Onyeka Igwe, Eva Knopf, Rosine Mbakam, Sarah Maldoror, Marny Garcia Mommertz, Rebecca Pokua Korang, among others. They offer us encounters with Josephine Baker, Minnie Devereaux, Fasia Jansen or Majub bin Adam Mohamed Hussein.

Curators:

The Decolonize Dortmund project, comprising Black people and people of colour, is dedicated to addressing Dortmund’s colonial past. The city’s […]

Discussion: Co-Productions | Best Practice

Sophie Haikali, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Yasemin Şamdereli, Helga Binder

A conversation with Sophie Haikali, Khadija Zinnenburg Carroll, Yasemin Şamdereli, Helga Binder How can co-productions between German and African partners […]

Installation and discussion: i have to talk to you

Kerstin Honeit, Michaela Wünsch

A short montage from 20 US mainstream films, with all the roles dubbed into German by the same voice actress […]

Le pays à l’envers

Sylvaine Dampierre

FR
2009
Documentary
80’
OmeU

It has been 50 years since her father left Guadeloupe. Sylvaine Dampierre grew up in France, but returns to Guadeloupe […]

Milisuthando

Milisuthando Bongela

ZA / CO
2013
Documentary
128’
OFe

Milisuthando Bongela was born in 1985 in Transkei, the first »homeland« set up for Black South Africans, which was declared […]

Sambizanga

Sarah Maldoror

FR / AO
1972
Spielfilm
103’
OmeU

Set in Angola in 1961, quarry worker Domingos Xavier is a devoted husband and father who likes to play football […]

Resilience in the image. The filmmakers explore artistic possibilities for dealing with racist archive images from the colonial era. In […]

The short films in this programme share a desire to connect with allies across generations – in the past or […]

Until the 1960s, people of colour who wanted to access mainstream cinema could only do so by fitting in with […]

Screening of Specialised Technique (Onyeka Igwe) and The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman (Rosine Mbakam).

»My intention as a Cameroonian filmmaker is to decolonise myself from what I have seen in films. African cinema is […]