Adrian Brunel primarily made silent films. After decades of neglect, film historians have recently rediscovered and lauded his work for its intelligence, sophistication, and humour.

Crossing the Great Sagrada consists almost exclusively of outtakes from travelogues. The title is a pun on Crossing the Great Sahara, one of the popular travel films of the 1920s that documented “other cultures” in a way that reflected imperial, nationalistic, and often racist stereotypes.

Adding subtitles to the existing intertitles, Brunel undermines the footage’s authenticity and unmasks the colonial look at “foreign” countries. The film comments on widely used ethnographic shots meant to represent the continent of Africa by highlighting some of its popular misrepresentations and the overall artificiality of these colonial narratives.