LO DEF FILM FACTORY PRESENTS
Lo-Def Film Factory (Amy Louise Wilson and Francois Knoetz) is coming to WORM and joins forces with Roxette Capriles and Amber Vineyard (House of Vineyard, NL)! Together they create an open, interactive and personal workspace to engage in an artistic conversation about Climate (In)justice and Algorithmic Colonialism: you are invited to co-create with them!
During this special screening, Lo-Def Film Factory present a selection of films that merge CGI, live action, and critical politics of technology and ecology. Works include Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness, The Rock Speaks, and excerpts from their upcoming WORM collaboration Unmaking the Model.
The screenings will be accompanied by a conversation with the artists on their collaborative approach.
Find out more about their project at WORM here.
About Lo-Def Film Factory
Formed in 2019 in South Africa by Amy Louise Wilson and Francois Knoetze, Lo-Def probes the relationship between local contexts, politics and global technological systems. Drawing on archival research, performance, video art, and new media, their practice began as a mobile, amateur filmmaking workshop and has since expanded into installations, screenings and research-creation projects. Their lo-fi aesthetic becomes a way to expose high-stakes realities, offering a critical lens on how technology and ecology collide in postcolonial contexts.
This programme brings together a selection of films and works-in-progress that merge CGI, live action and speculative fiction. From reflections on the mining economies of Southern Africa to the mythologies embedded in digital infrastructures, these works engage with the entangled histories of technology and ecology.
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness
by Lo-Def Film Factory (Amy Louise Wilson & Francois Knoetze) and Russel Hlongwane
2019, South Africa, 9 minutes, English w/ English subtitles
A visually rich essay-film that reimagines Africa’s place in technological history. Blending costume, landscape and AI imagery, Dzata envisions a fictional institute of roaming scientists, inspired by African transcendentalist traditions, to challenge dominant narratives of innovation and progress.
Core Dump: Shenzhen
by Francois Knoetze
2018, Kinsasha, 13 minutes, French, English and Lingala w/ English subtitles
The first of the four chapters that make up the Core Dump series, is a dreamlike journey through Kinshasa, where discarded electronics and human stories merge into a haunting portrait of technological waste and urban survival.
Core Dump: Dakar
by Francois Knoetze
2018, Dakar, 13 minutes, French, English and Lingala w/ English subtitles
The final chapter of Core Dump returns to Africa, where e-waste is dumped under the guise of “recycling.” Following a street repairman who rebuilds himself from discarded tech, the film reveals the toxic labour, human cost and fractured promises embedded in the global digital economy.
The Rock Speaks
by Lo-Def Film Factory (Amy Louise Wilson & Francois Knoetze)
2025, South Africa, 7 minutes, English
A hybrid AI documentary tracing cobalt’s journey from mines in the DRC to global stock markets. The film exposes the violent labour and ecological crises hidden in the foundations of today’s technological systems. The film weaves a complex contemplation on an urgent ecological crisis that is fuelled by obscene labour practices that our technological systems demand.
The Big Hole Counter Narrative Project
By, Mkhululi Mabija, Carina Truyts and Francois Knoetze
2017, South Africa, 15 minutes, English
Centered on Kimberley’s Big Hole, the world’s largest hand-dug mine, this project aims to disrupt odious colonial narratives that romanticize Kimberley’s history of diamond extraction. Through a mix of archival material and speculative imagery, it challenges dominant accounts of industrial progress and unearths alternative ways of telling history.
Cineville valid at the door and online the day of the screening!
