Sven Augustijnen
2011 - Belgique - Couleur - 104'
Fifty years after his assassination, Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo, is back to haunt Belgium. Through commemorations, encounters and a return visit, a top-ranking Belgian civil servant who was in Elisabethville on that bloody day of 17 January 1961, attempts to exorcise the ghosts of the past. To the sound of St John Passion by Jean-Sébatien Bach, Spectres plunges us into one of the blackest days of the Belgian Congo’s decolonization. An examination of the biopolitical body, this documentary film exposes the fine line separating legitimation and historiography and the traumatic question of responsability and debt. The screening of Spectres will be followed by the rescreening of The Laughing Man (catalog, p. 14).
Photography : Sven Augustijnen
Sound : Benoît Bruwier
Editing : Mathieu Haessler, Sven Augustijnen
Production : Auguste Orts Production, Projections, Jan Mot, Cobra Films
Distribution : Auguste Orts Production (marie@augusteorts.be, +32 2 550 03 69)