Focus

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.

Curated by Betty Schiel and Johanna Yasirra Kluhs. Anti-racism counselling: Phyllis Quartey

Supported by the LWL-Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe and Engagement Global, with funds from the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Curators:

Specialised Technique

Onyeka Igwe

UK
2018
Experimental
7’
OFe

William Sellers and the Colonial Film Unit developed a framework for colonial cinema, characterised by slow edits and minimal camera […]

STARS

Mojisola Adebayo

GB / DE
2005
dokumentarischer Animationsfilm
7’
OFe

STARS tells the story of the Nommo: extraterrestrial afro-hermaphroditic, anthro-amphibian migrants. Their cosmic stories of planetary constellations and distant stars, […]

The Country Upside Down

Sylvaine Dampierre

FR
2009
Documentary
90’
OmeU

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

BE / CM
2016
Documentary
77’
OmeU

It all begins in the dark. Rosine Mbakam returns to Yaoundé after seven years in Europe. The story is told […]

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

Unearthing. In Conversation.

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński

AT
2017
Experimental
13’
OF

An empty auditorium. A stack of photo boxes. A colonial flashback. As a performer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński studies a series of […]

Verwoben & Vergessen

Rebecca Pokua Korang

DE
2023
Experimental
11’
OmeU

A long and still ongoing history of oppression and othering: Korang blends found footage from the Nazi propaganda film Germanin […]

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