A Person of the Forest

From Viennale

A phantom voice courses through the veins of colonial archival imagery. The machinery of tobacco and rubber production on Sumatra’s plantations fills the screen of early twentieth-century Dutch promotional films, while a simian ghost sifts through the ruins of these images, searching for tales of resistance long since lost. Amid spectres of colour and texture, the stuttering editing and presences conjured from sound, human and non human perspectives rally against the apparatus of imperial domination. (Victor Guimarães)