DAHOMEY
Benin, France, Senegal | 2024 | 68 min | col.
In 2017, Emmanuel Macron announced that France would return 26 sculptures to Benin (once Kingdom of Dahomey, then Republic of Dahomey, currently Republic of Benin). This prompted a public debate among the younger public, who reflect on how to repay a culture not only in material terms: what is left of it after colonialism has predated it for decades? Mati Diop, a French filmmaker of Senegalese origins, conquered the 2024 Berlinale Golden Bear with this vibrant documentary in which statues take life in the half-lit corridors of the museum while images of an agora of youths pop up on the screens of cell phones all over the world. They reach us too, through an editing that proceeds by strokes and breaths, catalysing the viewers in the instances it proposes. A militant and lyrical film in which culture is represented as a vital inspiration running through objects and people in time and turning them into a single body. (t.p.)
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: 05 Nov 2024
- Time: 13:15
Location
- Cinema La Compagnia - Via Camillo Cavour, 50/R, 50121 Florence
Organizer
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MATI DIOP
Mati Diop (Paris, 1982) grew up in a Franco-Senegalese family. Her first feature, Atlantics (2019), winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, established her as one of the leading figures in international arthouse cinema and of a new wave in African and diasporic cinema. Her nomadic, lyrical and political cinema crosses boundaries between genres and formats, as an extension of her dual identity and proud Creoleness.
