This is how we see you: British Congolese visit the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium

Описание: From the Cultural Studies team
'This is how we see you' - David Garbin and Salem Wazaki.

Leopold II was the King of Belgium from 1865-1909 and chief architect of Belgian colonialism. From 1885-1908 he personally owned and ruled the Congo Free State largely as a vehicle to harvest rubber from which he and Belgium profited immensely. His management of the Congo was exceedingly brutal, even by the colonial standards of the day. Amputation of limbs of the local population was a routine response for not meeting prescribed rubber harvest quotas, and estimates of the death toll due to his rule range between one and fifteen million. The Congo still deals with the systemic effects of this brutal colonisation to this day.

This short film follows the path of young British Congolese in their visit to the controversial Royal Museum of Central Africa (Tervuren) in Belgium before its renovation in 2013, as part of Sociologist David Garbin's research on Central African identities and Diaspora. The film discusses the colonial legacies of heritage and representations of Africa in a context of political tensions in the diaspora and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The film is ahead of its time in engaging in a critical discussion of Western museums and their portrayal of their colonial pasts. Particularly in terms of hiding the atrocities committed, and the lack of a portrayal of colonised people’s cultures as anything but ‘primitive’, ‘exotic’ or ‘tribal’. It also foreshadows more recent controversies and debates about what should be done with statues of those who profited from the suffering of others in the colonial period, and whether artefacts taken from colonised countries to Western museums should be returned to the places where they originated.