Sankofa

Solidarity / Responsibility / Manifesto: While shooting on Ghana's Atlantic coast, the African American model Mona falls under the spell of Sankofa, the spiritual guardian of Cape Coast Castle, one of the cruelest slave factories, from which captives largely bound for the Americas embarked. A journey through time takes her back to the time of the Atlantic slave trade. For the purposes of this list, within the general conversation regarding decolonization and restitution, I list this film third. But, in a curatorial context, given my memory practice as an accidental archivist, Haile Gerima explains the meaning of his film thus: “To move forward, you must reclaim the past. In the past, you find the future and understand the present." SANKOFA deals with the healing power of history and memory. “(Didi Cheeka)