KAPITA

Synopsis

From one perspective, this history of exploitation in Congo is well documented from the colonial era to the present. There are a wealth of images of the copper and cobalt mines that fueled the industrial revolution, of the coltan and niobium mines that fuel the electronic revolution. But even in their efforts to reveal violence, such images often render the engines of exploitation invisible. By recoding archival footage and intertwining it with contemporary images, Kapita exposes patterns of extraction and burial to decode colonial representations—and exploitation—of central African land and people.

“Ka-pi-ta”: The official job title given to Congolese charged with enforcing their white master’s bidding—through domination—over their fellow Congolese on plantations, in factories, in commerce, and other sites of capitalist extraction and production.

“While most films operate on a principle of “assembly”, Kapita positions itself as an excavation, scraping through layers of images to expose the fault-lines that define present-day Congo. Its kaleidoscopic mix of colonial film-reels and contemporary footage plays like a seismic disruption, liberating the eye from a discrete sense of time, and leaving one to question whether the present moment is yesterday’s tomorrow or tomorrow’s yesterday.” Nelson Walker III