Michael Uwemedimo is a member of Vision Machine, which seeks to establish a network of experimental film collectives around the world to research, analyze and respond to the conditions and mechanisms of economic, political and military power. Working with relatively localized communities – palm plantation workers in North Sumatra, for instance – Vision Machine aims to give voice and vision to the singular histories of these communities, whilst articulating them in an analysis and argument of global scope, weaving a web of stories between networked solidarities – creating transatlantic chain stories; swapping footage between groups, and together fashioning a series of dense, multi-layered works. Michael Uwemedimo also lectures in Film Studies and has curated a number of events, most recently the Godard retrospective at the National Film Theatre and Tate Modern.

Abstract

The Globalisation Tapes

The Globalisation Tapes: a collaboration between the Independent Plantation Workers’ Union of Sumatra (Indonesia), the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF), and Vision Machine Film Project. Through chilling first-hand accounts, hilarious improvised interventions, collective debate and archival collage, The Globalisation Tapes exposes the devastating role of militarism and repression in building the “global economy”, and explores the relationships between trade, third-world debt, and international institutions like the IMF and the World Trade Organization. The film is a densely lyrical and incisive account of how these institutions shape and enforce the corporate world order (and its ‘systems of chaos’).