Primate Colors (2015) dir. Elke Marhöfer

Primate Colors traces how humans and nonhumans are connected in the flows of capital. It inquires into the life of Chungking Mansions, shuttle traders and commerce objects, which connect Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta with Nairobi, Djibouti, Rotterdam and Elba. The film pursues and accelerates methods and forms elaborated in ethnographic and anthropological filmmaking. Yet, the anthropological understanding of following subjects to record their lives is reoriented. Rather than (critically) explaining the actions, believes or norms of certain subjects, the film concentrates on the affective components of events, objects and actions. (No claims are made about the lives of others. ) Here, filming is to follow affects and to produce further affects. To follow affects, does not mean to be affected by an idea or a subject, but to be mesmerized by materiality, by the sounds of the running camera and by following the movement of things that are being filmed.