Fordlandia
Malaise

Fordlandia Malaise is a lm about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928.
His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less then a decade.

Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times (20th and 21st centuries), between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.

Although Fordlandia is well-known due to the short lasting Fordian period, one must not forget the history either before or after.

Giving voice to the inhabitants who claim the right to write their own story and reject the ghost town label, Fordlandia Malaise blends together archive imagery, drone footage, tales and narratives, myths and songs.

Director: Susana de Sousa Dias
Image, Sound and Editing: Susana de Sousa Dias
Assistant Editor: Mário Espada
Sound Design: António de Sousa Dias e Susana de Sousa Dias
Colorist: Marco Amaral
Sound Mix: Pedro Góis
Executive Producer: Rui Ribeiro
Assistant Producer: Nikolaus de Macedo Schäfer
Production: Ansgar Schaefer
Production Company: Kintop, Portugal
Distribution: Kintop | Arsenal-Institut for Film and Videoart

• [2022] Rencontres du Cinéma Documentaire, Montreuil [França]
• [2022] Tramway, Glasgow [Reino Unido]
• [2022] MICAR- Mostra Internacional de Cinema Anti-Racista, Porto [Portugal]
• [2022] Colonial Legacies-1st Lusophone Film Festival, Massachusetts [EUA]
• [2022] Mythscapes, Arsenal-Institut for Film and Videoart, Berlin [Germany]
• [2022] DOCLUANDA – International Documentary Film Festival, Luanda [Angola] 
• [2022] Atrás do Som e da Imagem, O’culto da Ajuda [Portugal]
• [2021] On coloniality, a.pass, Brussels [Belgium]
• [2021] FICA – Festival Internacional de Cinema e Vídeo Ambiental, Goiás [Brazil]
• [2021] ICI Berlin, symposium “LATEX – Critical Inflections on (Neo) Extractivism in Latin America, online viewing [Germany]
• [2021] European Film Festival, Stockholm, [Sweden]
• [2021] Freep Film Festival, Detroit [USA]
• [2021] Sobrevivências: entre memória, utopias e pertencimento, Cinema Urbana, Brasília [Brazil] 
• [2021] Antropocénico/Ecocrítica, National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon [Portugal]
• [2021] Camões, Centro Cultural, “Presidência Portuguesa na União Europeia 2021”, Bissau [Guiné-Bissau]. 
• [2021] Centro Cultural, DocPPUE, Luanda [Angola]
• [2021] Encontro(s) Mulheres nas Descolonizações, Modos de Ver e Saber, Hangar, Centro de Investigação Artística [Portugal]
• [2021] Focus “Susana de Sousa Dias”, Arquipélago, Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, Açores [Portugal]
• [2021] Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones, Filmoteca da Catalunya, Barcelona  [Spain]
• [2021] CCBB São Paulo, Cinema Português Contemporâneo [Brazil]
• [2021] CCBB Rio de Janeiro, Cinema Português Contemporâneo [Brazil]
• [2021] CCBB Brasília, Cinema Português Contemporâneo [Brazil]
• [2021] Cineclube Cinerama, Rio de Janeiro [Brazil]
• [2021] Documentary and Philosophy, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Lisboa [Portugal]
• [2020] Maysles Documentary Center, Program “After Civilization”, Nova Iorque [USA]
• [2020] E-Flux, Program “Ecology After Nature: Industries, Communities, and Environmental Memory, Part Three – Decolonizing the Landscape” [USA]
• [2020] Film as Memory Work: A Seminar with Susana de Sousa Dias, University of Stockholm and Royal College of Art, online viewing [UK and Sweden]
  [2020] Seminar with Susana de Sousa Dias and Melanie Smith, Extrativismo e Estética – org. Denilson Lopes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, online viewing [Brazil]
• [2020] Seminar with Susana de Sousa Dias and Emília Tavares , org. Beatriz Furtado, LEEA – Laboratório de Experimentações em Audiovisual – Universidade do Ceará; online viewing [Brazil]
  [2020] 4ª Semana de Cine Portugués – Cidade do México, [Mexico] 
• [2020] États généraux du film documentaire, Lussas [France]
• [2020] MiradasDoc, Tenerife [Spain]
• [2020] One World Romania, Bucareste, [Romenia]
• [2020] IberoDocs, Ibero-American Documentary Film Festival [UK]
• [2020] On Fail[l]ed Tales and Ta[y]lors, collective exhibition, Suspended Spaces and Madrassa Collective, Tabakalera [Spain]
• [2020] MDOC São Paulo Festival Internacional de Documentário de Melgaço no Brasil [Brazil]
• [2020] Festival de Cine Radical [Bolívia]
• [2020] IsReal, Sardinia, [Italy]
• [2020] “Fordlandia Malaise” by and with Susana de Sousa Dias, ICI Berlin [Germany]
• [2020] Eigenheim Gallery, Weimar [Germany]
• [2020] Transtopia, Berlim [Germany] 
• [2020] Ojo Loco Grenoble [France]
• [2019] 69th Berlin International Film Festival 2019 [Germany]
• [2019] Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema [Argentina]
• [2019] DocumentaMadrid, XVI Festival Internacional de Cine Documental [Spain]
• [2019] IndieLisboa 2019 International Film Festival [Portugal]
• [2019] 55th Chicago International Film Festival [USA]
• [2019] Chicago Architecture Bienal, Chicago [USA]
• [2019] Beijing International Short Film Festival [China]
• [2019] Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival [Italy]
• [2019] Sheffield Doc/Fest  [UK]
• [2019] FFEP – II Festival do Filme Etnográfico do Pará [Brazil]
• [2019] Glasgow Document Human Rights Festival [UK]
• [2019] RIDM – Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal [Canada]
• [2019] Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival [Germany]
• [2019] XXV Caminhos do Cinema Português, [Portugal]
• [2019] Aricadoc International Documentary Film Festival
• [2019] Cinemigrante International Film Festival [Argentina]
• [2019] MIDBO – Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá [Colombia]
• [2019] MDOC – Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival, [Portugal]
• [2019] FRICINE, Festival Internacional de Cinema Socioambiental [Brazil]
• [2019] FIDOCS – Festival Internacional de Documentales de Santiago [Chile]
• [2019] Ficamazonía – Festival Internacional de Cine y Ambiente Intinerante de la Amazonía [Colombia]
• [2019] Curtocircuito International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela [Spain]
• [2019] 27º Curtas Vila do Conde, [Portugal]
• [2019] Matucana 100 – Centro Cultural, Santiago [Chile]
• [2019] Cine’Eco – Festival Internacional de Cinema Ambiental da Serra da Estrela, [Portugal]
• [2019] Cinenova – Portugal InterUniversity Film Festival, [Portugal]
• [2019] Filmes no Aquário, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisboa, [Portugal]
• [2019] Lima Alterna International Film Festival [Peru]
• [2019] 7ª Semana de Cine Portugués, MALBA – Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires [Argentina]
  [2019] 4ª Semana de Cine Portugués – Santiago, Matucana 100  [Chile]
• [2019] Festival Internacional de Curtas de Belo Horizonte [Brazil]
• [2019] À volta de Fordlândia, Fotoativa e Suspended Spaces, Belém [Brazil]

• Jean Loup Passek Award fot Best Portuguese Documentary | MDOC – Melgaço International Documentary Festival
• Cision Press Jury Award | XXV Caminhos do Cinema Português
• Universidade of Coimbra Best Documentary Award | XXV Caminhos do Cinema Português
• Honorable Mentiion| FFEP – II Ethnographic Film Festival of Pará

⤍ Full Press Kit Download (PT + EN / ZIP / 7 MB)

⤍ Press Kit (PT / PDF / 500 KB)
⤍ Press Book High Qality (EN / PDF / 6 MB)
⤍ Poster (EN / PDF / 900 KB)