Le fort des fous

Le fort des fous, first presented at Documenta 14, is a key work in the context of A History of Shadows' film programme. Not only in terms of its subject matter – the legacy of colonisation – or how it deals with the re-appropriation of history and memory, but also because Mari freely and playfully uses so many of cinema’s tools to deal with the past, to reflect on the present.

In three acts, we see re-enactments, improvisations and interviews performed and conducted with the inhabitants of Algiers (where Mari hails from), Kythira Island and the Prosfygika community in Athens. Departing from material records of the early colonial 'scientific expeditions' and 'taming campaigns' led by the French colonisers in North Africa, the story follows a community of young nomads and wanderers as they form an imagined utopian society in response to imperialist rule.