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The Sea is History

Louis Henderson

2016 00:28:00 FranceEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

The Sea is History, made in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, is a free adaptation of the poem by Derek Walcott. The film is a materialist and animist critique of the monumentalization of European colonial history, reading the past instead as something intimately entangled within the present as a living and mutational thing made up of the living and the dead. It is in this sense that the film suggests a way beyond the boundary évent that could be called the Plantationocene (brought on with the onset of modernity and the system of globalized capitalism that started with the colonization of the Americas in 1492, with Columbus arriving in Ayiti; latter day Dominican Republic) and towards a possible "Chthulucenic" future of créolised assemblages as a politics of re-narrativising death within life.

Made in Santo Domingo — the first capital of the New World, and on Lago Enriquillo — a hyper-salinated lake, once part of the Caribbean sea, that is flooding the border with Haiti due to the drastic rise in sea temperatures that are currently deeply affecting the global ocean.

About Louis Henderson

Louis Henderson is a filmmaker who is currently trying to find new ways of working with people to address and question our current global condition defined by racial capitalism and ever-present histories of the European colonial project. The working method is archaeological. Since 2015 he has been collaborating with the curator, producer, writer and performer Olivier Marboeuf on a variety of projects including talks, exhibitions, screenings, workshops, a play, short films and the production of a feature film. Henderson has shown his work at places such as; Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Netherlands; Doc Lisboa, Portugal; CPH:DOX, Copenhagen; New York Film Festival, NY; The Contour Biennial, Belgium; The Kiev Biennial, Ukrain; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin; The Gene Siskel Film Center, IL; Gasworks, London; and Tate Britain, London. His work is in the public collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France.

See Also: Louis Henderson: An Interview