The Power Plant

Concerning Violence (2014)

Thu Mar 22 2018

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

FREE Members \ $10 Non-Members

Studio Theatre, Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West

 

This screeninng is co-presented by The Power Plant and Black Artists' Network Dialogue.

Concerning Violence is a 2014 documentary written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Göran Olsson, and is based on Frantz Fanon's essay “Concerning Violence” from his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon was a Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, revolutionary, and writer. Olsson's film narrates the events of African nationalist and independence movements in the 1960s and 1970s which challenged colonial and white minority rule.

This screening is presented in the context of exhibitions featuring work by Algerian-French artist Kader Attia and Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh. Algeria was colonized by the French from 1827 to March 1962 when, after a hard fought war, Algeria gained complete independence. Attia’s work, in two- and three-dimensions, film and video, frequently incorporates signs of disfigurement, damage and repair to represent captured, fetishized and traumatized bodies and minds of victims of colonialism. Nigeria bounced from British corporate control to British Crown rule from the early 1800s until achieving independence in October 1960. Ogboh resettled in Germany, one of many former colonial powers, and explores in his work The Song of the Germans the anti-immigrant xenophobia which is on the rise in Europe — but one might ponder whether Europe, by colonizing Africa, created a link that can never be severed?

Following the screening, Josh Heuman, The Power Plant’s Curator of Education and Public Programs, will engage in conversation with University of Toronto's Dickson Eyoh and Kimberly Bennett, Protection Advocacy Adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They will also take questions from the audience.