WHAT WE SAID TO BRUSSELS AIRLINES

Collectif Faire-Part, 2026, 23 min., English, French and Dutch with English subtitles

One hundred years after the first flight between Belgium and Congo, Brussels Airlines invites Collectif Faire-part to screen their films about anti-colonial resistance aboard its flights. There are many reasons to accept, and just as many to refuse. A conversation unfolds – about the airline’s role in forced deportations, about budget issues, about the risk of contributing to the laundering of their image – but also about the willingness of some insiders to confront the company’s colonial past, about the chance to address problematic policies and share a message with thousands of captive passengers.

Collectif Faire-Part is an ensemble of Belgian and Congolese artists founded in 2016 by filmmakers Anne Reijniers, Paul Shemisi, Nizar Saleh, and Rob Jacobs. Their work explores stories and relationships between Kinshasa and Brussels, increasingly focusing on power structures and collective resistance. The collective collaborates across filmmaking, photography, curation, workshops, and festivals, with its membership evolving according to each project.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES + SOMETIMES IT WAS BEAUTIFUL

Christian Nyampeta is an artist living in New York from where he organizes programs, exhibitions, screenings, performances, and publications, which are conceived as hosting structures for collective feeling, cooperative thinking, and mutual action. Nyampeta convenes the Nyanza Working Group of ARAC—Another Roadmap School which participated in documenta fifteen, and he is the convener of Boda Boda Lounge 2022-2024, a trans-African film and video art festival co-initiated by Centre d’art Waza in Lubumbashi. In New York, Nyampeta convenes the African Film Institute at e-flux in Brooklyn.