Broken view

Broken View tells the history of colonised Congo, with the colonial gaze and the magic lantern in the background. From the Belgian Etienne Gaspard Robertson who caused a furore in the Paris salons to the Scottish explorer David Livingstone who brought lantern projections to the heart of the brousse, this early type of image projector was an effective way of presenting the colonial project as an exciting spectacle to the Belgian public as if it were reality.
"Henceforth, between the spectator and the image stands the night." Or rather darkness... serving the conquerors' dual purpose of transforming the 'savages' into virtuous Christians and conquering the riches of a country that, according to the colonial gaze, was "a no-man's land without history or science, populated by cannibals without language". Multi-voiced like the chorus of a Greek tragedy, Verhoustraete comments on the archives, in a beautiful montage assembly. He thus reveals the underlying intentions of this fetishistic iconographic factory, both in the amateur archives and in the propaganda material of the Christian missionaries. Breaking through appearances to deconstruct the colonial gaze. This is what this film essay brilliantly achieves. It makes us see more clearly the colonial past flowing through our veins.