Fordlandia Malaise

This offshoot of the symposium LATEX – Critical Inflections on (Neo)Extractivism in Latin America will take place online in the form of a screening of the film Fordlandia Malaise, followed by a discussion with its director, Susana de Sousa Dias.

The LATEX symposium itself will now take place on 27-28 September 2021. It was moved from its originally intended date of March 2020 due to the ongoing global health pandemic

Programme

19:30 Introduction
19:40 Screening Fordlandia Malaise (40′)
20:20 Online discussion forum with Susana de Sousa Dias, Ariadne Collins, Delfina Cabrera, and Marlon Miguel

Please note, the film will be made available online for approximately 24 hours (12 July 2020, 19:30 -13 July 2020, 20:20).

Fordlandia Malaise by Susana de Sousa Dias (40′, 2019), is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928. Ford’s aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. The remains of the construction site testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less than a decade.

Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times, between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass, and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.

Although Fordlandia is well known due to the brief Fordian period, one must not forget the history either before or after. Giving voice to the inhabitants who claim the right to write their own story and reject the ghost town label, Fordlandia Malaise blends together archival imagery, drone footage, tales and narratives, myths and songs.

Susana de Sousa Dias, born in Lisbon, Portugal, holds a PhD in fine arts/video and teaches new media at the Universidade de Lisboa. She has exhibited her cinematic works at international film festivals and art exhibitions and received several awards. In 2012 she was co-director of the international film festival Doclisboa.Filmography:
2005 Natureza Morta: Visages d’une dictature; 72’
2009 48; 93’
2010 Natureza Morta | Stilleben; video installation, 33’
2017 Luz Obscura; 76’
2019 Fordlandia Malaise; 40’, premiered at the 69th Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale)

Credits:
Direction, Cinematography, Editing and Sound: Susana de Sousa Dias
Sound Design: António de Sousa Dias, Susana de Sousa Dias
Producer, Production Manager: Ansgar Schaefer