Diabolical Architectures of Colonialism, a research-based film, is a durational, allegorical response to the voices absent from data critically analysed in the Cecil Rhodes archive (held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford) from times during the Kimberley diamond rush (1871), South African gold rushes (1873-1886), and African expansion as a result of British, German, and Portuguese imperialism.
Created almost entirely in Unity 3D, the game engine software, this film subverts the three-act hero structure. It demands the viewer to stay with its temporal conceit, as it conceptually engages the legacies of time, labour, psychological, material, and climate decimation in colonialism's afterlives, examining how one's cultural history and current reality are embedded and continued within these evasive bureaucratic languages, ledgers, and legacies.
Premiered at Transmediale Berlin (2023).
Written, directed, designed, animated and edited by Michael Salu.
Runtime: 42 mins.