Documentary “Dahomey” – “Dahomey” in the cinema: Trapped in the Paris museum

In a first step, the glory of the colonial state is reduced. Using images of miniature models of the Eiffel Tower that flash ridiculously in the Parisian night: the national landmark here is Tinnef, and what is in the museums has been stolen. Mati Diop’s documentary film “Dahomey” tells of a restitution process. In November 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron returned to what is now Benin a total of 26 of a total of thousands of objects that French troops had stolen from the then still existing Kingdom of Dahomey in the 19th century.

Diop’s film, which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale, is divided into two parts that unfold slowly, but by no means leisurely. The first shows packing, shipping, unpacking and display processes. The objects travel from Paris to Benin. In the second part, students from the Université d’Abomey-Calavi discuss the significance of these processes.

Diop’s image and sound design goes beyond a pictorial understanding in favor of something that could be called “magical documentaryism.” Object 26 is given an electronically alienated voice, a lyrical text that reflects on its own experience in the diaspora and the darkness in France and during the return journey: »As far as I can remember, there has never been a night that was so deep and opaque .« Existence in the Paris museum is described by Object 26 as imprisonment. »How long have I traveled around in my thoughts, but it was so dark in this strange place that I lost myself in my dreams and became one with these walls.«

“Dahomey” symbolically diminishes the masters of yesteryear and shifts the focus to the descendants of those directly colonized by force.

The return is not a triumphant one. And with her image-text montage, Mati Diop has managed to avoid the impression that her film speaks for the colonized and therefore in their place. Instead, by giving a voice to the artifact being returned, its significance is felt. When Object 26 remembers and thinks about the darkness, the objects and their restitution become the medium of history and thus the communication of colonial history.

As in her feature film debut “Atlantique,” ​​Mati Diop never uses her cinematic means blatantly, but rather subtly and precisely. For example, you can pay attention to how the image and the soundtrack – field recordings and the soundtrack by Dean Blunt and Wally Badarou – repeatedly become asynchronous and in which moments.

This mediation is not simply asserted, but can be felt. It unfolds, so to speak, as an atmosphere in the room in which the film is projected, so that one cannot help but think about colonialism and colonial history together with the film. The space thus becomes a temporary venue for history and historiography and for questions of reparation.

The idea of ​​filming objects as a medium for negotiation and debate about history and violence becomes explicit in the second part of »Dahomey«. University students discuss the meaning of restitution in a forum, accompanied by everyday scenes and street noises from the city of Cotonou, where the 26 objects are exhibited in a museum built especially for them.

It begins with the question of the meaning of the act of restitution itself: A patronizing gesture by the colonizers? After all, 26 out of around 7,000 stolen objects is a ridiculously small number. Or the beginning of a broader change in the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized? Finally, one could now think about how to get the remaining objects out of France and back to Benin.

Soon the debate turns to fundamental questions about one’s own history, the education system – why is it important to quote Aristotle and Plato, who decides? – and what are commonly called questions of identity. The images are constructed in such a way that the viewer is placed in a friendly but determined role as those watching and, above all, listening; the camera close to the speakers’ faces, but never so close that it becomes distanceless.

The way in which the speakers from the Global South and the listeners from the Global North are placed in a new relationship was already symbolically anticipated in the opening sequence, the image of the miniature Eiffel Towers. You don’t hear any French politicians speaking in this film. “Dahomey” makes the masters of yesteryear symbolically small and shifts the focus to the descendants of those directly colonized by force, not to give them a voice, but to let them speak for themselves.

»Dahomey«, France/Senegal/Benin 2024. Directed and written by Mati Diop. 67 min. Now in the cinema.