Fordlandia Malaise

In 1928, Henry Ford founded Fordlândia in Brazil, a company town centered on a rubber plantation on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon. The plantation was intended to supply rubber to his automobile factories in the United States. Ford provided houses, schools and other facilities for the workers and their families but also imposed unreasonable rules, both at work and in people’s private lives. In her film, Susana de Sousa Dias reflects on the past and present of this neocolonial project, which lasted less than ten years in its original form.

Fordlândia is a place suspended between two eras, between utopia and dystopia. Amid decaying buildings of glass and steel, people live and children play, feeling closely connected to the town’s past. De Sousa Dias foregrounds the voices of today’s residents as they reclaim the narrative of their land by combining their stories, legends and songs about Fordlândia with archival material and drone footage. Through this seamless interplay of elements, we feel how a place and its people can be impacted when an outsider comes to impose his will by force.