The statue of <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/dahomey-wins-golden-bear-at-74th-berlin-international-film-festival/" title="Dahomey Wins Golden Bear at 74th Berlin International Film Festival”>King Ghézo raises his fist to the sky. The wooden upper body is naked, the chest muscles are tense. Undoubtedly, the ruler of the Kingdom of Dahomey was once a proud man. But that was a long time ago. His image now stands in the Quai Branly museum in Paris, and employees call him “Number 26.” They touch it with gloves, as if the roughly carved image of the king had suddenly become fragile.
Before they pack him in a wooden box for his journey, he is given protective material. They wrap their necks and loins in white cloths. The proud Ghézo now wears a neck brace and diaper. None of this is an lese majeste, on the contrary, the packaging serves to protect him on the way to his West African homeland. And then he goes lying down into the transport box, which resembles a coffin – and darkness surrounds him.
The king speaks in the dark
Mati Diop‘s 67-minute film “Dahomey”, which follows the process of restitution of 26 looted works of art from France to what is now Benin in November 2021, won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in February. Another documentary, it was said after the award for the best feature film in 2023 went to “Auf der Adamant” about a day clinic for people with mental illnesses.
Winner of the Golden Bear: Director Mati Diopdpa
And then, as viewers, in the darkness of the shipping crate, we hear the statue of King Ghézo speaking, not in French, as is the official language in today’s Benin, but in Fon, the language that the people of the Kingdom of Dahomey spoke before the French colonizers came .
In the darkness of his transport coffin, the wooden king complains about the ongoing night, the narrowness of the walls and being uprooted from his homeland. This is clearly fiction. And the film by the French-Senegalese director has long been more complex than the categories quickly used by the outside world would suggest, while they lack any precision.
Details begging for decryption
The lines that Ghézo speaks were written by the writer Makenzy Orcel. He comes from Haiti, the country to which hundreds of thousands of slaves were taken from West Africa since the 16th century. Today the descendants remember – like Orcel. But the sound of the words he puts into King Ghézo’s mouth is distorted. It is not the voice of a human being.
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It is the voices of many people that are digitally altered to create the timbre of the ancestral voice. The film owes its sound design to Corneille Houssou, Nicolas Becker and Cyril Holtz. Otherwise, Mati Diop refrains from explaining: Who was Ghézo? When and under what circumstances was the work of art stolen? Who initiated the restitution? Until when was Benin called Dahomey, and does it share the same borders? Just Google it yourself, seems to be Diop’s answer, because her film doesn’t educate, but rather lets the pictures do the talking.
For example, in a wide angle shot of a wool blanket spread across the sidewalk in Paris: sparkling knick-knack lighthouses are sold to tourists from the ground. What Diop doesn’t show us: the sellers. She doesn’t have to, as viewers, with our internalized clichés, we become fulfillment aids to her empty spaces.
Three rulers from the Kingdom of Dahomey: King Behanzin, King Ghézo and King Glélé (lr)EPA
And the German printing press from Heidelberg, which is used to spread the news of the return of the cultural assets in Abomey, the capital of Benin, is by no means striking, but rather a detail that begs to be deciphered. These nuanced shots create a delicate network of omissions and associations in the first half of the film and thus create a soft foundation for the second part of your film, which needs exactly this subtlety in order to be able to develop full impact.
Only 26 of 7,000 cultural treasures return home
While we have previously experienced the repatriation from Ghézo’s perspective, the perspective changes from the moment the cultural assets find their way into the museum in Abomey that was built especially for them. Now we look at the restituted works through the eyes of the people of Benin. But Ghézo’s resurrection from the transport coffin, which was carefully prepared on film, does not occur. The king has returned, but it is not a homecoming: there is no longer a kingdom and even less a people that wants to be ruled.
The place of return is not a place of identification: here, too, Ghézo is addressed in French instead of Fon; Instead of adoration, the statue undergoes classification: weight, condition, degree of preservation, sterile measurement instead of ecstatic greeting. Her soulful physicality, her rough materiality is in absolute contrast to what she experiences here: again just the wrapping of museum walls, the touch with gloves, which transform him from a cult object into a statue of a saint. Ghézo was a stranger in Paris and is also a stranger here in Abomey.
Now comes Diop’s strongest trick: as viewers, we are now witnessing a discussion by art students at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi. They argue about restitution. While the return is celebrated as a ceremonial state act in Benin, young people are divided in their opinions. After all, only 26 of a total of more than 7,000 cultural assets have returned to Benin – from France alone.
Why did Abomey have to build a museum for the statues, another student asks, and why they had this discussion in French is another. The film will not provide any answers. He can’t – and obviously doesn’t want to – because the wounds inflicted on the country’s identity are still wide open today.
