The Tree of Authenticity

In Sammy Baloji’s poetic and meditative film, a forest giant bears witness to centuries of colonial violence and environmental destruction in the Congo Basin. The basin is one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, second only to the Amazon rainforest in size, and removes billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. Structured around records found amid the remains of a research centre in the heart of the jungle, the film reflects the lingering burden of the colonial past and its inextricable links to contemporary climate change. This thought-provoking essay film presents a disruption to the colonial archives that dominate historical narratives, via the diaries of Paul Farina, a Congolese native and Belgium’s first Black colonial officer, and Abiron Beirnaert, a white Belgian colonial interloper. Both men were agronomists who died under mysterious circumstances. The Tree of Authenticity uses their archetypal oppositionality to render the broader narrative of colonialism. It is the tree of the title, however, that has the last word.