Hannes Verhoustraete

A poetic essay film on the colonial gaze and the magic lantern. This early type of image projector was used in Belgian colonial propaganda, showcasing the good works of the Church, State and industry. Lantern projections were an effective way of selling the colonial project to a somewhat reluctant Belgian public.

The wanderings of a retail trader, Jean-Simon, sketch the contours of a microcosmic informal economy in Congolese society. The financial urgency of everyday life is permeated by the political situation in Congo: a larger, more abstract urgency, which the diaspora experiences from a distance. The film finds itself somewhere in between these two imperatives, between here and somewhere else, the past and the present, small money and big money.