A quarter of Martinique is contaminated. Not by a natural disaster, but by colonial poisoning, with France as an accomplice. For decades, Chlordecone – a highly toxic pesticide – was dumped onto the fields to preserve the banana industry, a system directly descended from the plantation economy. Soil, water and humans were sacrificed in the name of an imposed economic order. This crime is the material continuation of colonialism. You Think the Earth is a Dead Thing rejects the depoliticised white ecology that speaks of a »crisis« without ever naming the culprits. Here, the earth is alive, imbued with the memories of slavery, exploitation and environmental racism. Polluting Martinique is colonisation by other means. It decides that some lives are valued less than profit.
Yet there is ongoing resistance to this poisoning. It is rooted in knowledge that has long been criminalised: the medicinal practices of the Maroons – people who escaped slavery and built autonomous lives. Knowledge of plants, healing in harmony with nature, a transformed relationship to the land – these gestures are acts of rupture. They once made survival outside the plantation possible; today, they enable the fight against colonial poisoning. This film asserts a simple and radical truth: without decolonisation, there can be no ecology. Healing the earth without confronting history is a lie. As long as the earth is treated as a dead thing, colonialism will continue to thrive.

Guests: Sam Leter, Elisa Hubbel, Maja Boukella

In cooperation with Decolonial Filmfestival