Fordlandia Malaise

Forum Expanded 2019

Fordlandia Malaise is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928. His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less than a decade.
Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times, between the 20th and 21st centuries, between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass, and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.
Although Fordlandia is well-known due to the brief Fordian period, one must not forget the history either before or after. Giving voice to the inhabitants who claim the right to write their own story and reject the ghost town label, Fordlandia Malaise blends together archival imagery, drone footage, tales and narratives, myths and songs.

by Susana de Sousa Dias Portugal 2019 Portuguese 40’ Colour & Black/White World premiere | Documentary form

Crew

Director	Susana de Sousa Dias
Cinematography	Susana de Sousa Dias
Editing	Susana de Sousa Dias
Sound Design	António de Sousa Dias, Susana de Sousa Dias
Sound	Susana de Sousa Dias
Production Manager	Ansgar Schaefer
Producer	Ansgar Schaefer

Produced by

Kintop

https://kintopfilms.com https://kintopfilms.com

Susana de Sousa Dias

Susana de Sousa Dias, born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1962, holds a PhD in Fine Arts/Video and teaches at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Universidade de Lisboa. She has exhibited her cinematic works at international film festivals and art exhibitions worldwide and received several awards. In 2012 she was Co-director of the international film festival Doclisboa, opening up the new sections “Cinema of Urgency” and “Passages” there in 2013.

Filmography

2005 Natureza Morta, Visages díune dictature; 72 min. 2009 48; 93 min. 2010 Natureza Morta | Stilleben; video installation, 33 min. 2017 Luz Obscura; 76 min. 2019 Fordlandia Malaise

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2019