As an Arts and Cultural student, I have not only been familiarized with the complexities of representation and the problematics of Western canonization but also about the abilities of visual art to challenge these seemingly naturalized forces. The most interesting part about film, in my opinion, is that it does not need to have a coherent narrative to be understood and be emotionally impactful. There are many more elements to film such as music or cinematography that build the story. This makes the medium of film such an interesting medium to study and explore.

Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s creation ruptures the westernized narrative of colonialization. It asks us how we remember the past and who is affected by our representations of the past. There are always more parts to the same story. Jean-Baptiste goes beyond just retelling the same story. Instead he visualizes the experience in which his father played a part in which makes this piece quite a personal matter.

The film Jean Galmot, aventurier (1990), to which Moune Ô refers to, is another representation of a white hero; coming into a colonized country, falling in love with a French Guinean woman, and ultimately wanting to be a part of the community he entered. While the film itself could be encountered as postcolonial through its anti-colonial narrative, Jean-Baptiste disrupts this fantasy. He brings forth the deep and fragmented emotions that are connected to the filmmaking itself and shines a light on a certain issues that have been left out of the canonical narrative.

The fragmented emotions are supported by the distorted and manipulated video excerpts that show us the filmmaker’s narrative. It creates the possibility for the audience to see a glimpse of how the actors, like his own father, might have felt. Jean-Baptiste highlights that it is not just the representation of a Westernized narrative but that the whole film-making process for the 1990 film that re-opens a past that has only been forgotten by the Western world. He calls the filmmakers “new adventurers” (Moune Ô) a reference to the movie title’s name and places the filmmakers on the same level as colonizers. Further, underlined by the articulation of the movie-making process “armed with their cameras, and remake everything, burn everything, rebuild everything, capture everything, for the film” (Moune Ô). Here I am referencing only the short film itself because the film does not have a protagonist or a hero, the only form of narration is the white words that superimpose the images. Lastly, Jean-Baptiste shines a light on the ugly aspect of history that the filmmakers of Jean Galmot, aventurier have left out. The destructing forces of digging gold – leaving behind not only undrinkable water but also any source of life. Not only in a metaphorical but also in a quite literal sense.

Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s Moune Ô is not a re-telling of the film Jean Galmot, aventurier. It feels much more like someone trying to recollect a memory that has been repressed through the deep pain of the past.