DOKU.ARTS
Zeughauskino Berlin
10.09.–12.10.2014

Les Statues meurent aussi

“When men die, they enter into history. When statues die, they enter into art.” With this statement, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais begin their 1953 essay film Les statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die), which considers the ongoing effects of colonialism on European perceptions of African history and culture. Marker and Resnais’ film focuses on Western commodification of traditional, Sub-Saharan masks and statues, as well as the exploitation of African labour and performance in the realms of industry, sports, music, and dance. Seeking to diverge from essentialist views of blackness, the film emphasises the underlying linkage of Africa and Europe: “There is no break between African and our civilisation. Faces of the African art are shed by the same human faces, like snake’s skins.” Commissioned by the French journal Présence Africaine and winner of the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo, Les statues meurent aussi was partially censored for a decade and not screened in its entirety until 1968—an indication of the precocity of its critique of colonial ideology at a time when France was involved in the Indochina War and also facing Algerian independence movements. An early work by Marker and Resnais, both of whom were associated with the Left Bank Group in the 1950s and 1960s, this film is a testament to the filmmakers’ remarkable experimentation with aesthetic form and to their ardent sociopolitical commitments.