Maisha Maene
Filmmaker
February 2027
- Cinema
- San Francisco
“From mechanical invention to digital cognition, humanity’s relationship with technology reveals both progress and exploitation.”
As an artist i have been practicing my artistic and cultural work since 2018. Motivated by the acknowledgment that the Anthropocene is an era marked by a crisis of imagination, My work seeks to challenge and expand the ways we perceive our interconnectedness with the natural world and technology. I always works in interdisciplinary exchange with other artists and anthropologists and researchers. This collaborative approach allows me to develop a sensitive artistic language that aims at preventing political provocation while still engaging deeply with pressing socio-political issues. My work not only initiates social and cultural discourse through the medium of film but also extends these conversations into the public sphere. Through performances by my film’s protagonists in public spaces, the topics of my films are brought directly to the public through exhibitions and screenings, creating an interactive and performative form of artistic research. This approach engages audiences and passersby alike, fostering spontaneous encounters and dialogues that transcend traditional viewing contexts and deepen the engagement with the film’s themes. Methodologically, my work draws on theconcept of Technê, which emphasizes the relationship between science, art, and environment. It reflects a foundational understanding of technology not just as tools or machinery, but as deeply embedded cultural practices that shape human experience and perception. By integrating these insights, my work challenges conventional narratives and invites audiences to envision new possibilities beyond the current technological paradigm. My current project Lobi is the continuity of my working topic as a filmmaker interested in the topic of environement , human connection to technology and mining extraction explored in my previous work such as my latest short Mulika screened at Sundance and several festivals worldwide.
Maisha Maene is a Congolese visual artist and director with a deep commitment to addressing how performative practices can evolve to honor cultural artifacts as dynamic vessels of memory and heritage. His recent films , including his short film Mulika, screened at Sundance, Locarno,Clermond Ferrand and at the Biennale Video Brazil in Sao Paulo. Mulika emphasize the intertwining of human rights, environmental consciousness, and cultural resilience. Maisha Maene participated in the Berlinale Talents Doc Station lab in 2024 and hewas selected to participate to the Camp SandBox 2024 in San Francisco, in California. The eclectic mix over the years of Camp SandBox has included participants ranging from Oscar-winning directors and Nobel-winning scientists, to emerging voices in nonfiction and early-career researchers pushing the boundaries of their field. Maisha Maene is also a 2025 IDFA Academy alumna and he is working now on his documentary film project LOBI which is currently in development.
Lobi reflects on how scientific insights from quantum physics and ecological theories can reshape our understanding of interconnectedness in a world shaped by fragmentation processes caused historically by the assumption of the separation of nature and culture, innerview and outer view matter and spirit. Through the film, Lobi connect the resource-rich landscapes of Congo with technological hubs cities in the western world with performances artists who question the similar topic, highlighting both the visible and hidden connections between raw material extraction and technological progress.
From mechanical invention to digital cognition, humanity’s relationship with technology reveals both progress and exploitation. This project examines this journey, connecting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the western world as focal points of the global energy extraction and economy. The DRC’s resource wealth—coltan, cobalt, and gold—powers modern technology, yet extraction leaves environmental devastation and economic inequities. These resources often return as electronic waste, polluting rivers and ecosystems, illustrating the environmental costs of technological progress.
Artists like Paty Kitete, Junior Mvunzi, and Lerie Pemanagpo use recycled materials to interrogate this paradigm and draw on animism in aligning indigenous ecological knowledge with modern science to reimagine energy as relational rather than extractive. Kitete’s fragmented mirrors reflect societal fractures, challenging the illusion of separation foundational to Western thought. His work highlights interconnectedness, whether through ecological interdependence or quantum entanglement, and reimagines technology as a means to confront our shared crises.
Mvunzi explores the fragility and strength of materials, paralleling humanity’s relationship with energy and the environment. Pemanagpo bridges Kinshasa’s oral traditions with cutting-edge AI research, using ritualistic performances to examine entropy and the resonance between human and machine. I have been working on this project since 2024 and still working on research and development of the project.
A key thematic link between the western world and the Congo lies in addressing human connection to technology and mining resource challenges. In San Francisco , particularly, plans to establish a human and technology intersect with an already strained regional technological history and diving into the present technology development reality with the artificial intelligence and the human connection to technology. After participating in the Camp SandBox program in October 2024 in San Francisco with my documentary project Spaceman in Kongo supported by Sundance, i realise a strong connection between Congo mining resources and the western technology hubs. And San Francisco represent one of the biggest technology hub city in the western world. Working on my experimental project Lobi since then, i realised a link between my film and San Fransisco and i wanted to explore that topic with a link to the city of San Francisco working with artists and uniting with scientists, policymakers, and communities to address resource management and inspire crosssector collaboration.
During the residency in San Francisco I’m willing to visit technology hubs companies meet with scientists, local artists , researchers , policymakers, and communities activists to develop performative experiments and networking with San Francisco-based researchers, technologists, and cultural institutions to expand the interdisciplinary scope of the project and engage San Francisco’s communities in participatory storytelling and embodied memory practices. During the residency I will be also creating public performances that challenge conventional narratives of resource extraction and technological progress.
In partnership with
Kaani Films
Kaani Films is a documentary production company dedicated to creating films that explore urgent social, cultural, and environmental issues.