Mati Diop’s documentary feature Dahomey contains many statements similar to this one. The film follows the return of 26 royal objects from the kingdom of Dahomey, which was established in the year 1600. These objects were returned in December 2021 from the French Museums to the Republic of Benin. Dahomey is a story about coming to terms with the past which has been fundamentally changed by the forces of colonialism. It was trodden by the French as soon as the war between them and the Kingdom of Dahomey erupted in 1892 and its artifacts were taken by war. Like any other colonizer, France not only locked up the Dahomean people but also attempted cultural genocide on their history which is an ironic addition to the abuse. Africa, as we see it today is a complete consequence of European invasion, be it language, education, or the status of cultural spheres.
So as in the case of Matis’s narrative feature debut Atlantics, Dahomey is a story about the transition between the states of being and non-being. Diop adds to this a remark of a returned object, in which the author shifts the documentary towards the genre of a ghost story.
Artifact 26 is a sculpture of wood and some metal which recounts its own story of travel from France back to Benin, its homeland. He has a low raspy voice, remains hushed in age, and contains unexplored depth of knowledge. At some points Diop also shoots from 26’s perspective. When it is being bundled inside a crate, we are among the last to see the light. 26 like us recalls the journey from being carried by white French museum workers in France to being lifted in her homeland by her people with dark skin. For 26, the narrative is quite the opposite, for she is finally at peace to be in Benin knowing that one injustice was corrected.
However, then follow discussion and debates within the community trying to cope with the void of their history that had been missing for centuries. It is this sense of darkness in Dahomey which is the most engaging, watching the community go through the motions of grieving the loss while also having to contend with the fact that there would be few more years to come. There are thousands of such artifacts still within France and at this rate it is highly uncertain when they would come to the homeland.
Some individuals are forever hopeful, however, other people believe the damage is there, for good, and their very essence is now to be associated with the individuals that tried to subjugate them. Diop’s lens does not pass judgment on the conversation and instead bears witness to it in a tender fashion as it invites conversations on-screen and off-screen. They do not entirely record the slow recovery process of the looted object’s physical presence but the existence of such people is keenly experienced by the people, and viewing them is to feel grief over what has been taken. If history is not separate from the self, then the self must always be seen within the crevices of their history. The trauma of the Colonisation can never be comprehended without an understanding of the Trauma of Dislocation which is the fragmentation of the self, often in different corners of the earth, many times through violence. The people of Benin have just started a very difficult and lonely journey of figuring out identity in the current world.
Given the low 68 minutes runtime of the film Dahomey, the film seems to lack in duration. Post introducing the setup of the film the conversations are so interesting that one would hope they would last longer. To be Black anywhere on this planet is to be forever engaged in the aspects of history as it is constantly being edited. The colonial heel has scarred us all and the best way to counter that is to talk about it all the time. Liberation is not just about restoring our properties back, it is also about confronting and rejecting acts of cultural terrorism employed in the obliteration of cultures and the recreating of societies in the image of the oppressor tribes. Diop models his Dahomey within the framework of cinematic imperialism and this compels the audience to pay attention to history because it has consequences that future generations must live with. Surreal, sad, and thought-provoking, this is a documentary that everyone needs to watch.
For more movies like Dahomey Visit 123Movies.
