A collaborative project between film-makers Rosine Mbakam, An van Dienderen and Eléonore Yaméogo, Prism interrogates the supposed neutrality of the photographic lens, principally in regards to representations of race. Moving through the corridors of a film school before alighting on a sparse set where a lighting test is taking place, Dienderen’s section unfolds as a continuation of her short film Lili, which grapples with a cinema practice called “china girl”. Used for calibration purposes, these test images usually feature a white model and a colour chart; in other words, colour films were made with only white skin in mind.
While Dienderen’s work grapples with camera bias on a technical level, Mbakam and Yaméogo expand the argument by pointing to larger ideological frameworks. In her segment, Mbakam draws an explicit link between imperialism and cinema; early footage of Africans, for instance, was taken by their colonisers. And restaging Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s famous painting Portrait of a Black Woman with a live model, who applies her own makeup and stares back at the viewers with defiance, Mbakam reclaims the autonomy of marginalised figures from the white gaze.
