Enjoy Poverty

The documentary investigates the economic value of poverty. Its question is this: who does the filmed image of poverty serve. The Dutch artist Renzo Martens travels into the interior of the Congo. There he makes a long journey on his own. Along the way he runs a programme. The programme’s claim is to show the poor that poverty is their main capital. That claim is the film’s own provocation. Its title is part of that provocation too. Martens spends three years travelling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The question he ends on is this: who owns poverty. Renzo Martens’s Dutch and Belgian coproduction, ninety minutes long, was completed in 2009.