Rosinha and Other Wild Animals

Marta Pessoa – Director Introduction

An Exhibition is, by definition, a place for looking: for those looking and those being looked at; for what is put on show and how it is received. This is where the documentary begins, in the knowledge that it, too, is a way of showing and looking.

The spectre of racism hangs over us. How naturally this human zoo was received in 1934. How easily we look at the pictures of Rosinha, a black woman whose voice is unheard, whose breasts are bared, reprinted a thousand times over.

This film lies in the idea of searching, working from fragments. After all, racism is an idea, a way of looking – something still alive, not a historical fact. The film is constructed through the widening of the spaces and tools of the archive. The objects of memory and spaces of conservation to which museums give centre stage, gazes which are repeated, Rosinhas who echo through photographs kept by colonial war soldiers and ideas that linger like stuffed animals. The colonial empire was the great hunting trophy that all European countries desired, and racism was its weapon. ROSINHA AND OTHER WILD ANIMALS is a film about the remains of these hunting expeditions.