The Tree of Authenticity review – talking tree explains Congo's struggle to overcome colonial past

The Guardian

7 days ago

In his first solo directorial feature, photographer and visual artist Sammy Baloji excavates the colonial legacies in the Congo basin, the second largest tropical forest in the world. Building on a decades-spanning archive from the Yangambi National Institute of Agronomic Studies and Research, the film is loosely divided into three sections, each guided by a different voice that speaks to the complicated environmental history of the area. The first segment is informed by the journal entries of Congolese agronomist Paul Panda Farnana. Working both within and outside Belgium's colonial control during the 1910s and 1920s, Farnana wrote of his frustration with the extractive regime, as well as meteorological statistics related to rainfall and temperature, which are narrated in voiceover. This is combined with largely static shots of present-day Congo, where vestiges of colonial buildings lie next to verdant fields, a haunting reminder from a dark past.
This cinematic link through time continues with the second narration, taken from the writing of Belgian colonial official Abiron Beirnaert. A stark contrast to Farnana's clear-eyed, political perspective, Beirnaert's contemplations luxuriate in boredom and jadedness. The images that accompany this section are also of sparsely attended archives and abandoned factories that do little to subvert Beirnaert's imperialist outlook. The third voice, however, grants sentience to the ancient tree of the title, bearing witness to decades of Congolese history.
This last is a fascinating stylistic choice that encourages us to let go of our anthropocentric approach to climate change, even if giving a tree an inner monologue seems to be a rather facile way to foreground non-human perspectives. Though perhaps leaning too heavily into an academic visual experiment, The Tree of Authenticity offers a fascinating look at how extraction can take many forms, even within the context of sustainability.
The Tree of Authenticity is at the ICA from 10 July