By Nelson Walker
Published May 17, 2021

Petna Katondolo, a multi-genre artist whose decolonial Africanfuturistic work engages historical content to address contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues, says the film takes its title from “the official job title given to Congolese nationals charged with enforcing their white masters' bidding--through domination--over their fellow Congolese on plantations, in factories, in commerce, and other sites of capitalist extraction and production.” In the opening shot of a new African film that is included in the Summer Special of 71st Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale)’s Forum Expanded presentation outdoors in June 2021, a man walks a group of tethered goats in slow motion down a crowded street. The street sounds are distant, and the movement of the people, animals, and cars is lulling, almost hypnotic. Suddenly there is a flicker and a jolting cut to a murky image seemingly hidden underneath. Whereas most films operate on a principle of ‘assembly’, KAPITA  by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo of Congo-Kinshasa feels more like an excavation.

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Katondolo, a multi-genre artist whose decolonial Africanfuturistic work engages historical content to address contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues, says the film takes its title from “the official job title given to Congolese nationals charged with enforcing their white masters’ bidding–through domination–over their fellow Congolese on plantations, in factories, in commerce, and other sites of capitalist extraction and production.”

In his exploration of Kapita in practice and representation, Katondolo scrapes through images of contemporary Congo and juxtaposes them with clips from colonial films depicting foreign extraction and exploitation. Many of the images, both past and present, are ‘re-coded’ to powerful effect. Actions play backward, black and white tones are inverted, and the subjects themselves are distorted, destabilising conventional notions of time, space and history.

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KAPITA by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo of Congo-Kinshasa is included in the Summer Special of the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded presentation outdoors June 9 - 20, 2021The visuals are accompanied by an immersive soundscape of buzzing insects and crackling fire. There is a striking duality to the sound, which simultaneously evokes impressions of industry and a sense of death, and together with the images, creates an indelible sensory link between the engines of colonialism and its vast human toll.

But Katondolo, who also serves as serving as Artistic Director of Yole!Africa and Alkebu Film Productions, is not content to merely make this connection. Partway through the film, there is a scene of a street performance in which a makeshift robot drags a shirtless man on a chain. They begin to scuffle and the shirtless man deactivates the robot in his grip. As the robot powers down, the scene cuts to archival footage of a Congolese man standing with his wife and child. The man looks directly into the camera, exposing the colonial gaze before the image is buried by a subsequent archival clip of minerals. Then the film abruptly flashes back to the street performance — but now the tables are turned, and the shirtless man, who defiantly drags the robot down the street, is in control of his own destiny.

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Like the shirtless man depicted in the film, KAPITA seizes the very images that have stereotyped and dehumanised the Congolese, and resets them to chart a new path forward.Like the shirtless man depicted in the film, KAPITA seizes the very images that have stereotyped and de-humanised the Congolese, and resets them to chart a new path forward. But as the film comes to a close, it returns to the same sequence that it began with, leaving one to ponder whether we have reached a new beginning, or history is destined to repeat itself.

Petna Katondolo currently splits his time between his hometown of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chapel Hill, USA, where he is Artist in Residence at the Stone Center for Black History and Culture at the University of North Carolina. He also teaches and consults for international organisations, addressing social and political inequity among marginalised groups through culture and education.

Nelson Walker is Programmer of Congo in Harlem, New York, USA.