Broken View
Hannes Verhoustraete, 2023
A poetic essay film on the colonial gaze and the magic lantern. This early type of image projector was used in Belgian colonial propaganda, showcasing the good works of the Church, State and industry. Lantern projections were an effective way of selling the colonial project to a somewhat reluctant Belgian public.
However fragile images made of glass may be, many thousands survived. Often lavishly hand colored, these tainted, horribly beautiful images helped shape the ways in which Europeans viewed, thought of, spoke about, and treated the colonial other. This tension between aesthetic experience and the reverberations of colonial ideology is central to the film. In composing an associative fabric of assemblages and collages, the film attempts to map the colonial gaze from a broken view, how it persists across time and shapes the way we view, think of, and speak about the past.
a film by Hannes Verhoustraete
production Ruben Desiere & Hannes Verhoustraete
image Hannes Verhoustraete
lanternist Ditmar Bollaert
sound Nina de Vroome
editing Hannes Verhoustraete
sound editing Sabrina Calmels
sound mixing Aline Gavroy
colour grading Olivier Ogneux
graphic design Ferre Marnef
produced by Accattone Films
a co-production with KASK School of Arts
festivals Arkipel, Indonesia (2023); Brussels Art Film Festival, Belgium (2023); Courtisane, Belgium (2023); États généraux du film documentaire Lussas, France (2023); FLIGHT: Mostra internazionale del cinema di Genova, Italy (2023); NEXT Festival, Belgium (2023); Pesaro Film Festival, Italy (2023); Documenta Madrid, Spain (2024); Ishango Encounter, DR Congo (2024); Istanbul Experimental Film Festival, Turkey (2024); L'Europe autour de l'Europe, France (2024); Quebec International Ethnographic Film Festival, Canada (2024); Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taiwan (2024); Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival, Greece (2024)
awards Critics' Prize in the International Competition, Mostra internazionale del cinema di Genova FLIGHT 2023; Grand Prize in the International Competition, Mostra internazionale del cinema di Genova FLIGHT 2023; Jury Prize in the International Competition, Pesaro Film Festival 2023; Special Mention by the Critics Jury, Pesaro Film Festival 2023; Special Mention by the Youth Jury, Pesaro Film Festival 2023; Young Jury Prize, Brussels Art Film Festival 2023; Nominated for Best Documentary, Ensors 2024; Nominated for Les Magritte du Cinéma 2025
distribution Avila