(Mati Diop, France/Senegal/Benin/Singapore 2024, 68 min., DCP, French with English subtitles)
(Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Ghislain Coquet, France 1953, 30 min., DCP, French with English subtitles)
Free screening. Complimentary admission sponsored by Nocon & Associates.
Shortlisted for Academy Awards in both the Best Documentary and Best International Feature categories, and winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale Film Festival, Dahomey is director Mati Diop’s follow-up to her acclaimed Atlantics in 2019. This poetic, immersive documentary delves into real perspectives on far-reaching issues surrounding appropriation, self-determination, and restitution. Set in November 2021, the film charts 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey that are due to leave Paris and return to their country of origin: the present-day Republic of Benin. Using multiple perspectives, Diop questions how these artifacts should be received in a country that has reinvented itself in their absence. Followed by Statues Also Die, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker’s short documentary that exposes and criticizes the lack of consideration for African art in Europe. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.
Preceded by Statues Also Die, a short documentary by Chris Marker.