Renzo Martens. Episode 3

The film Episode 3 by Renzo Martens (NL) investigates the emotional and economic value of Africa’s fastest growing and most lucrative export-product: filmed and photographed poverty. The film also shows that the poor delivering the raw material, benefit as little from it as from traditional exports as gold, rubber, cacao, petrol. During two years Renzo Martens undertakes an epic journey revealing the system and structures which inevitably keep Africa poor.

Deep in the interiors of Congo he launches an emancipatory programm that helps the poor to benefit from ‘their’ poverty. Mixing investigative journalism, satire and selfcriticism, Episode 3 is ingeniously provocative and surprising, often times ironic and hilarious, but the mirror he holds up to us is inevitable sad. Episode 3 is the successor of Martens’ previous film Episode 1 (2003) shot in Chechnya.

Renzo Martens
Episode 3