‘Broken View - Hannes Verhoustraete’

A poetic essay film about the colonial gaze and the magic lantern. This early type of image projector was used in Belgian colonial propaganda to showcase "the good works" of the church, state and industry. Lantern projections were an effective way to present the colonial project as an exciting spectacle to the Belgian public.

As fragile as sculptures made of glass may be, many thousands have been preserved. This exceptional material sheds a unique light on how “our Congo” was embedded in our common consciousness. The tension between beauty and colonial ideology is central to the film. 

Hannes Verhoustraete (Belgium, 1986) is a Belgian filmmaker, lecturer and researcher at KASK / School of Arts in Ghent. He writes for online film magazine Sabzian. Un pays plus beau qu'avant (2019) was his debut film.