Mati Diop on ‘Dahomey’: ‘The political exploitation of art restitution pushed me to make this film’ - The Africa Report.com
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Mati Diop on ‘Dahomey’: ‘The political exploitation of art restitution pushed me to make this film’
By Eva Sauphie - Posted on September 28, 2024 13:00
The Franco-Senegalese film director accompanied the repatriation of Dahomey’s 26 royal treasures from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris back to their homeland in Benin and turned it into a surreal documentary.
In Atlantique, which won the Grand Prize at Cannes in 2019, director Mati Diop took on the issue of young people from Dakar leaving for Europe. Her film Dahomey, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin in February 2024, tackles the theme of return. By giving new life and voice to works looted during the colonial era, she has orchestrated a multifaceted narrative that echoes the stories of millions of enslaved people.
For the filmmaker, the repatriation of these works to Benin is only a first step in reawakening its citizens’ cultural identity, a process that she hopes will involve all of civil society, especially young people.
The Africa Report: You place a great deal of emphasis on young people, whom you film in the midst of a debate following France’s restitution of works it had seized from Dahomey (now Benin). Why?
Mati Diop: In the film, the debate with the students at the University of Abomey-Calavi was staged. For the casting, I selected most of the participants, because I realised quite quickly that it wasn’t easy to find young people in Benin who could express themselves freely, without fear of being repressed by the authorities. But in Dahomey, their words and their point of view belong entirely to them.
This meant that we had to find people who would take the risk of speaking out and, above all, who would have something to say. It wasn’t a question of being politely patriotic and saying that it was great to have brought back the works, or, on the contrary, saying that it was pointless. The idea was to open up the debate on the issues that lie behind the restitution, such as cultural identity, the traces left by colonialism in the education system or the relationship of these young people to France and the degree of intensity of their desire to break away. These subjects allow us to measure the extent to which young people are aware that they have built their lives outside the presence of this material heritage. I wanted to look at the level of ‘coloniality’ in the air.
When I tried to recreate the conditions for this debate after the film, it didn’t work. Because all it takes is the presence of a single authority figure and you’re back to a much more restricted debate. There is a huge amount of work to be done. The Beninese government is launching many projects, but on the ground you can see just how much remains to be done in the field of education.
"Only civil society can and must give meaning to the restitution of works of art – Mati Diop, Director
Patrice Talon has invested $1.1bn in the creation of several museums in Benin, including one devoted to the kings and queens of Dahomey, which will house 26 of their treasures. Is this project in tune with the population’s needs?
Patrice Talon deserves a lot of credit for recovering these cultural assets. It’s undeniably historic. But if artists, intellectuals and young people don’t take up the issue, then we’re missing the point. Only civil society can and must give meaning to this restitution. Otherwise there is no real purpose, except serving the interests of the Beninese and French governments.
Restitution must involve the social fabric, otherwise it will simply be a matter of repatriation. It is up to us to bring this matter back down from the top to the bottom, to redeploy it in people’s consciousness and to approach it with as much depth, subtlety and complexity as possible. Because this heritage comes back to make us ask questions, to confront us with the colonial past, to enlighten and – above all – transcend the present.
I could have succumbed to cynicism and said to myself that there were more urgent matters, such as the migration of these men, women and children who are dying at sea. But the political exploitation [of the restitution of the works] ultimately pushed me to make this film.
"The royal treasures of Dahomey spoke using Dany Laferrière’s language. This chorus of stories about deportation, migration and return is our entire history
Atlantique and Dahomey address the question of the crossing, one through the prism of departure, the other through the prism of return. In Dahomey, you’ve chosen to personify the works by giving them a voice. Is this a way of showing that it is, above all, a story about people?
I immediately linked Dahomey to the theme of the crossing. In fact, it’s almost the same gesture as in Atlantique. The voice of the treasures goes far beyond that of the repatriated works. It is the voice of an entire community of men and women who were reduced to slavery. This voice echoes the destinies and accounts of migration.
The text through which the works ‘speak’ came very late in the writing of the film, and their power was initially taken on by silence. Before I found a co-author, the Haitian writer Makenzy Orcel, I had worked on fragments of Dany Laferrière’s L’Énigme du retour [The Riddle of the Return], in which the author recounts how he returned to Haiti the day after his father’s death.
This text, written in the first person singular, was an obvious choice for me. The royal treasures spoke using Laferrière’s language. This chorus of stories about deportation, migration and return is our entire history.
Did you conceive of these two films as a diptych?
In 2017, I was finishing writing Atlantique when I had the intuition that my next feature film would be on the subject of the restitution of works of art. That same year, in Ouagadougou, French President Emmanuel Macron made a promise to that effect, and I found the announcement a bit far-fetched and out of touch. The reappearance of this issue in the French political debate was surprising insofar as, until that point, it had been virtually non-existent.
When the skeleton of Saartjie Baartman [nicknamed ‘the Hottentot Venus’] was repatriated to South Africa, I was 20 years old, and I remember what a non-event it was in France. I found that infinitely sad. But, at the time, I wasn’t ready to tackle these issues head on. It’s a long process, known as colonial trauma.
There’s no escaping this period of shock. And yet, little by little, generation after generation, this return to the past takes hold. Each of us, in our own way, using our own discipline and medium, comes to terms with this history and confronts it. In 2017, the question of the restitution of works of art struck a chord in my imagination like never before.
I was writing this script about these young men who died at sea after crossing the Atlantic to reach Europe, and who came back in the form of spirits to haunt their neighbourhoods and the hearts of their sisters, their lovers and their friends, when I heard about restitution. I then had the intuition that we had to continue to confront the spectre of the colonial past.
Dahomey is a fictional work, although it is well documented historically. How did you manage to create drama from such raw material?
When I learned back in 2021 that the restitution of the works of art was taking place, I was already immersed in this work of fiction, because I had imagined that the restitution would not take place for years. The discovery that it was imminent had an almost magical effect on me. Suddenly, the future became the present. Dramaturgically, something very powerful was happening.
How could one make a documentary on that basis? I was already working in the realm of the fantastical as conceived by American cinema, such as the work of John Carpenter, which has been a huge source of inspiration for me. But in Dahomey there’s also a genuine relationship with reality, specific to African culture, which I’ve inherited.
You trace the journey of these works from the Quai-Branly in Paris to their transport by plane back to Benin. How did you get permission to follow all these steps, right up close to the treasures?
Initially, there was some reticence at the Musée du Quai-Branly, but once we received, thanks to the support of Felwine Sarr [co-author, in 2018, of the Sarr-Savoy report on the restitution of African cultural heritage], the authorisation from the Beninese government for me to accompany and film the works from start to finish, everything quickly fell into place.
"My film is a counter-narrative to a certain governmental scenario, but it allows a multiplicity of points of view to be expressed.
Addressing a government directly is a very special situation for a filmmaker and for its producers [Les Films du Bal]. It was unheard of. At the time, I wasn’t fully aware of the country’s political situation. But the adviser to culture minister José Pliya – also a playwright and director – knew my work and had confidence in me. Above all, the authorities realised that it was important for a film to tackle this subject.
How did you manage to avoid writing a film that glorified the government? Was it a balancing act?
Yes, being in direct contact with a government on a national matter is an unusual situation, so I had to be completely independent. This was respected from start to finish. That was the sine qua non. The members of the Beninese government saw the film before it was shown at the Berlin Festival and never intervened to change its content.
Patrice Talon is always filmed off-camera…
He’s off-camera, but [he remains] at the centre of the debate, offering critical insight. I didn’t want my film to be a caricature of him. The film is a counter-narrative to a certain government scenario, but it allows a multiplicity of points of view to be expressed. We weren’t there to create pointless polemics.
One issue often comes up in President Talon’s remarks and in intellectual debates: that of standardisation, particularly in museum design. In the film, young people from the University of Dahomey also ask this question.
Of all the questions raised during the debate, the future of African museums was the least addressed. That’s because it’s a question for experts, and also because it’s new.
Listening to these young people, one senses [they have] as much pertinence and liveliness of spirit as they do blind spots, parts of history and of themselves that have not been conveyed to them. And yet, in their own way, they are saying things.
For example, that the museum is a Western concept, whereas they are Beninese. At the same time as they are questioning the place and role of museums, the university is also in the process of reinventing itself. The space is being decolonised and transformed into a popular forum as we film. This sequence was a living experience. That was the strength of this shoot, which allowed us to experience a way of thinking as it developed and was collectively liberated.
