France, Dec. 7 -- RFI: What led you to making your first documentary?

Sammy Baloji:In my practice I do make short films, experimental films, and I also did a few collaborative documentaries. For this project, I was doing a lot of research around the town of Yangambi [northern DRC], starting from an article in TheGuardian[about trees and climate change] given to me by one of the curators of the Lubumbashi Biennial, a contemporary art platform that I co-created with a few artists in [DRC].

I was quite interested in looking at the forest and producing a [piece] of work compiling the research. And I thought that a film could be a good way, as I had already discovered all the archives related to Congolese agriculturalist Paul Panda Farnanaan...