Tour Editorial

In August I went to a film screening by The Screen in Transit at the Nigerian Film Corporation Lagos Cineplex in Ikoyi, Lagos. It was evening, and I was ushered up through the orange building to the door of a dark cinema where the first film of the night, Nii Kwate Owoo’s You Hide Me, was just ending. I showed my free ticket at the door and went in.

The lights came on soon after I sat, and Ife, one of the curators, came to the front of the hall, mic in hand, and spoke briefly about the short film. A few questions from the audience followed, some of which he deferred to after the next film, and the lights faded out again. It was Mati Diop’s Dahomey.

The dramatised documentary follows the return of twenty-six out of the thousands of treasures looted from the kingdom of Dahomey, now present-day Benin Republic, by French colonial troops in 1892. A wooden statue of King Ghezo, who ruled Dahomey from 1818 to 1859, now object 26, narrates the film through an internal monologue spoken in Fon. We watch as he and his counterparts are sealed in wooden boxes and shipped back home to be put on display at a museum, presented with a fear not so different from 130 years ago: he is now alien to his own home and people.

An open debate amongst a gathering of young Beninese citizens takes place after the return of the artifacts. “Did you know that a thousand Beninese artifacts were held overseas? If so, at what point in your life did you find this out?” Arguments are made, and people cheer or applaud in agreement. “In high school we were told ‘a lot of things were stolen from us,’ we were told these were things, not knowing they were treasures.”