A French-Senegalese filmmaker who traveled with a collection of artifacts from Paris back to their country of origin in Africa, has expressed a sense of humiliation due to the lack of further action taken after this significant return of looted treasures in the 21st century.
In her film Dahomey, which premiered at the Berlin film festival on Sunday, the director, Mati Diop, documents the 2021 journey of 26 treasures that the commander of French forces in Senegal looted from the royal palace of the kingdom of Dahomey, part of modern-day Benin, in 1890.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had previously announced the return of items from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, marking the first instance of a former colonial power in Africa returning items. This sparked a movement among European governments to investigate their national collections and potentially return portions of them.
Diop’s movie not only captures the festive festivities commemorating the objects arriving in Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, but also features discussions among young individuals about the significance of the moment, considering the fact that there are still thousands of artifacts in European collections. “Returning 26 pieces out of 7,000 is disrespectful,” one student comments.
During the film’s debut, Diop stated at a press conference, “These 26 pieces are satisfactory, but they are insufficient. It is evident that there are far too few compared to the 7,000 pieces held captive in these museums, and I find it to be degrading.”
The largest ethnological museum in France, Musée du Quai Branly, has 3,157 objects from Benin in its collection. It is thought that additional objects can be found in smaller museums and private collections.
The objects that have been given back include a tall wooden throne and life-sized statues of animals. They were displayed from the Cotonou airport to the presidential palace in trucks with big pictures of the objects.
Diop suggested considering the staging of this process, noting a potential political agenda, but also presenting alternative responses involving artists, filmmakers, and students.
The director, who gained recognition for her first feature film Atlantics in 2019, which received the Grand Prix at Cannes and was released on Netflix, stated that she had initially planned for Dahomey to be a fictional movie because she didn’t expect the physical relocation of the artifacts to occur as quickly.
She expressed that she believed it would happen in the next 20 or 30 years. She was uncertain if she would experience it in her lifetime, so she chose to create a fictional movie.
Efforts to return more colonial-era items to Benin have been delayed in recent months due to a delay in passing a law in the French parliament.
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Bénédicte Savoy, a French historian who co-authored the 2018 report that led to Macron’s announcement, said their eventual return was nonetheless a question of when rather than if. “It will come; that’s certain,” she said. “It’s the march of history and nothing can stop it.
“Events will persist, independent of Emmanuel Macron or the French government’s internal policy considerations.” Diop’s movie “demonstrates the benefits of a society that embraces its cultural roots and gains resilience for the future.”
The movie illustrates the impact of the Dahomey treasures on the discussion of Benin’s national identity. Habib Ahandessi, who is featured in the film, stated at a press conference in Berlin that many were unaware of the looting of these artifacts. The announcement of their return initiated a discussion.
He stated that we were once taught that our ancestors were careless, but we later discovered that they were actually brilliant. Their works of art were remarkable.
Source: theguardian.com
