Plokta: Rat Film (2016)

𝗣𝗹𝗼𝗸𝘁𝗮 is a new film festival that unravels 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆.

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What connects racial segregation, pest control, mapping systems and WWII fears of the bubonic plague? Rats.

Digging into Baltimore’s historic attempts – and failures – to deal with these notorious rodents, Theo Anthony’s genre-bending documentary explores the underbelly of a city with deeper issues than its rat infestation. From gritty street-level views to computer-generated landscapes, from harrowing reportage to utopian mythology, Rat Film finds humanity in the most inhuman situations.

Anthony’s investigation of his hometown encounters street rats, lab rats, rat lovers and rat exterminators. Neighbourhoods barely recovered from over a century of segregation reveal tragic and comic stories – stories told not only by their human residents and rodent pests, but also hidden structures of demography and city planning. Here, zip codes determine people’s livelihoods: “New maps, old maps, same maps”. As the film progresses, it becomes clear how technology and science have shaped the blueprint for social inequality in the city.

Opening the evening ahead of the main feature, 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗨𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮 (2019) by Sjoerd ter Borg & Mark Jan van Tellingen finds another pernicious system of control in Seoul.