Uppland

Uppland is a 30-minute research film tracing the complex relationship between landscape, displacement and the global extractive industries within, and beyond, sub-Saharan Africa. The film documents a new-town called Yekepa, designed and built by and for a mining company prospecting for iron-ore in the late 1950s, that exploited and transformed the indigenous landscapes of Yeke’pa. The film represents an original collaboration between an architect and a filmmaker. This research took them to the remote highlands of Liberia, once a thriving mining community, now a concrete ruin in the West African bush. Exploring the town, the researchers discovered promises of prosperity, abandonment and forgotten injustices. They revealed insights about western architecture, the remnants of colonialism, and the spiritual costs of mining. The main outputs from this work are a number of international screenings at major film festivals, architectural biennales, as well as contributions to an international conference in Sweden. Educational rights to the film were acquired for the distributing to international research institutions and universities across Europe and North-America. ‘It is a galling portrait of the harvesting of African resources and the damage done to both land and people... Uppland avoids most of the pitfalls of the narrated, exploitation documentary genre, its disembodied voice- over never becoming too authoritative, outraged, or self-indulgent – a rare achievement in this ever-expanding field.’ Danny Hoffman, Africa’s a Country, May 2019.