Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi re-edited a remarkable collection of footage from travels around the world-Antarctica, Eritrea, India, Italy, Tangiers, Uganda-shot almost entirely by the early Italian cinematographer Luca Comerio (1874–1940). But, in a manner central to their method of working, they not only present this fascinating material, they examine it and artistically rework it-using the decay of the original as a formal component-to bring forth its suppressed ideological content. As critic J. Hoberman notes, “Seldom has the imperial nature of photography been more frankly acknowledged. The cameraman is transparently the great white (image) hunter.” Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi comment, “Our film was centered on the metaphor of amnesia: the amnesia of Comerio's last years, the general ‘amnesia' about primitive cinema, and the desire of early audiences for exotic spectacles, which reflected their dreams of conquest and cultural pillage (their ‘amnesia' about early cultures).”