STOLEN PHOTO
Price: $310.00 Code: 2715 |
Directed by Kevin Coleman and Senal Colombia
2024, 54 minutes
One hundred years ago. Banana workers went on strike in Colombia. A US-owned fruit company refused to negotiate. A massacre ensued. This is the story of how the Company and the Colombian military used a photograph to identify workers, and how the violence of December 1928 mutated into oblivion.
Stolen Photo uses the archives of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International) to make visible the techniques of a corporation and to commemorate lives and futures cut short.
Subjects & Collections
2025 American History Cinema Studies Economics Latin-American Studies Political Science Sociology World History Health Business
Reviews
"Kevin Coleman's documentary on the unspeakably tragic but relatively unknown U.S. sponsored 1928 massacre of Colombian banana workers is moving and compelling. Most importantly, it sheds new light on one of the most shameful episodes in the economic and political history of the Americas, returning the incident to prominence and giving human faces to the victims."
- Dan Koeppel, Writer for the New York Times Magazine and Popular Science, and author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.
"Stolen Photo orchestrates pieces of memories, whose meaning may be not fully known to those who carry them; however, once juxtaposed with other bits of information, alongside a picture of the massacre, the rebellious power of intergenerational transmission is reaffirmed to continue the struggle against racialized capitalism. The editing of the film amplifies this. While the photos lead the film, they are not held as a privileged source."
- Ariella A'sha Azoulay, Author of Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism and director of The World Like a Jewel in the Hand