Episode III: Enjoy Poverty

Episode III: Enjoy Poverty
Directed by Renzo Martens
Produced by Inti Films Renzo Martens Menselijke Activiteiten
Screenplay by Renzo Martens
Cinematography Renzo Martens
Edited by Jan de Coster
Release dates
 2008
Running time
 90 minutes
Country Netherlands

Episode III : Enjoy Poverty (2008) is a film of (and by) the Dutch artist Renzo Martens.

Background

The film is a sequel to Martens' Episode I – Enjoy Poverty (in which he filmed refugees from Chechnya).[1] Episode III – Enjoy Poverty premiered as the opening film of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2008. Subsequently, the film was screened at numerous international film festivals and broadcast on thirteen different television channels. Renzo Martens won the Flemish Culture Prize in 2010 and was nominated for the Artes Mundi Prize in 2014.

Synopsis

For two years, Renzo Martens travels with his camera through the poorest and most violent areas of the Congolese interior. In these regions, where poverty is the highest export product, Martens start an emancipation program in which he encourages local communities to monetize their poverty. The local photographers, who are showing proudly their pictures of marriages and births, are encouraged to face their lenses on the most cruel and shocking situations. Renzo Martens explains carefully how they should shoot the jutting ribs of a malnourished child to make the picture attractive to sell to Western newspapers. When hope is flickering in the eyes of the Congolese photographers, it all comes down when they notice they will never obtain a press card to enter closed war zones. In this respect, Martens can only acknowledge the hopeless situation and organizes a party in the jungle to indulge their poverty.

Critical reflection

The film is a study of the political claims of contemporary Western art, which are often praised but in many cases at the expense of another exploitation. Martens criticize this aspect of contemporary art by repeating it. Without taking a close defined position against this injustice and exploitation, the film unfolds itself as the point of critique as such. That is what makes the film autoreferential.

Frieze magazine criticised the film for perpetuating the very thing it was protesting against - the pleasure of watching people in dire circumstances - and stereotyping the Congolese plantation workers.[1]

Awards and nominations

2013

2010

2009

Screenings (selection)

Art venues

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

Festivals

Television channels

References

  1. 1 2 Dan Fox (April 2009). "Renzo Martens". Frieze. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
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