AFRICAN MIRROR (online)

Swiss citizen René Gardi (1909–2000) was regarded as one of the foremost Africa experts. In numerous books, TV programmes and films he told his audience of pretty naked savages and the pre-modern times in which they purportedly lived. Mischa Hedinger arranges materials from Gardi’s archive, combines the images with excerpts from newspaper articles and passages from his notebooks. This way the director proves in a wonderfully pointed manner how much the process of image-making can be a form of colonialism, and not only casts our view of Africa into doubt but our European self-image as well.