Catalogue > At random

Morley, Flanagan, Tom

Post-Fordlandia

Doc. expérimental | hdcam | couleur | 19:30 | Irlande, Brésil | 2011

?Post- Fordlândia? explores the mythologies surrounding Henry Fords failed utopia ?Fordlândia?. Fordlândia, an an abandoned American town and rubber plantation constructed in 1928 by Henry Ford in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest exists as the most poignant existing monument to Ford?s attempt to export his puritanical model of capitalism and the American way of life into other parts of the world. Through a filmic exploration of this ghost town through the eyes of an other-worldly protagonist, the work contemplates the physical and ideological failure of the exportation of the American capitalist dream into one of the most complex ecological and cultural places on the planet. ?Fordism?, Fords? own term to describe his ideal model of capitalism, has irrevocably altered the development of western society, and whilst Ford?s vision was at once protecting even parental, it was utterly totalitarian. As industrialized processes became increasingly global, the flaws in Ford?s logic began to erode the fabric of his utopian dream. ?Post-Fordlândia? is a thought provoking, contemplative film exploring the failure of the technological utopianism that underpins so much of Capitalism and the assumptions that all societal problems will be solved by endless growth and new technologies.

Megs Morley and Tom Flanagan are artists and filmmakers based in Galway, Ireland, who collaborate on large scale visual art , film and public art projects. Their work is primarily concerned with exploring cultural and political contexts and sites through the expanded use of artist's cinema, cinematic space, documentary, fiction and experimental film. Their approach is multifaceted and experimental and plays with the tropes and forms of non-fiction film, by presenting moments of cinemea verite alongside constructed and fictional elements, whilst avoiding traditional narrative structures of mainstream documentary in order to explore a self-reflexive inquiry into the medium of film, and to complicate potential readings surrounding the documentation of politically complex sites and contexts, thereby creating a criticality on the relationship between images, history and memory. Their work has been shown both nationally and internationally and they are currently working on two feature length experimental documentaries, one of which focuses on Fordlândia.