Like the Glitch of a Ghost

Paula Albuquerque / Netherlands, Portugal / 2023 / Czech Premiere / 21 min.

synopsis

Paula Albuquerque's conceptual film is based on a propaganda documentary from the 1950s, which she came across during her research in the archives of Amsterdam's Eye Film Museum. It deals with the “educational” colonisation activities of the Netherlands in Suriname. The archival footage showing the interaction between a Dutch nurse and the indigenous tribes was used by the director to create a double cinematic work that, through a digital glitch that replaces the silhouettes of the indigenous population, allows her to highlight the ideological nature of the original film and restore the lost sovereignty of the “spirits”, who for centuries have been perceived as the inferior ones.

“You notice there is a huge difference in how the body of the white male is represented when exhausted… and when we look at BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour]. Then, the body is always poor, dirty, sick. It’s always in relation to slavery or colonialism, or in positions of servitude.” — Paula Alburqerque

Quote source: Screen Daily

biography

Paula Albuquerque is a Portuguese artist living in Amsterdam. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and an MA in Fine Arts from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Her experimental documentaries have been shown in internationally renowned galleries and film festivals around the world.