Anna O and the Case of Displaced Memory
Marie-Josèphe Angélique is the name of a Black slave in New France (Montreal, Canada,1734), who was tortured, hanged and burned down to ashes. She was convicted with arson, burning down much of what is now known as Old Montreal. There is no consensus regarding her innocence nor about the motivations behind the fire. The conflicting interpretations of Marie-Angélique’s case seem to rather reflect internalized notions on class, gender and race.
The video piece uses the case of the hanging of Marie-Angélique as an investigation of postcolonial politics of memory, examining the dynamics of the Black experience as a hybrid negotiation between displaced collective memory and racialized political history.
Credits
Anna O and the Case of Displaced Memory
Single Channel Video
Color, Stereo
16mm to 4k
14 mins.
2017
A video by Victor Arroyo
16mm found footage re-photographed to 4k.
With texts by Stuart Hall, Sigmund Freud, Afua Cooper and Slavoj Žižek.
Re-photography by Bogdan Stoica.
Post-production supervising by Oswaldo Toledano.
Music and sound design by Christian Olsen.
Produced with assistance by Main Film.
Centre d’artistes voué au cinéma indépendant.
Exhibitions | Screenings
Festival Internacional de la Imagen
2018
