Cinema
Testament
John Akomfrah · 1988
Synopsis
Abena, a television journalist based in Britain, returns to Ghana to interview Werner Herzog on the set of Cobra Verde. The filmmaker evades her, and the wait takes her back to her own past: tied to Nkrumah's regime, she had had to leave the country in haste after its fall, and had been arrested by the military. The film, subtitled “the war zone of memories”, proceeds in fragments, archives and tinted images, and reveals only gradually what she lived through and what she is returning to confront.
Context
The film was made for the collective, with Tania Rogers in the role of Abena. It interweaves footage shot in Ghana with archive material tinted according to the symbolism of colours among the Ga, and borrows from Tarkovsky the “colour temperature” of Nostalghia. For Akomfrah, whose parents were active in Nkrumah's Pan-African socialism, this return to Ghana was also a search for what attaches a person to a place. The BFI describes it as the portrait of an African political figure forced into exile by a coup.
Who it is for
A film in English, of a poetic and fragmented form; it helps to know about the 1966 Ghanaian coup.
Prizes and reception
Time Out praised its poetic style; it is still being rescreened, at the Courtisane festival in Ghent as well as at the True/False Film Fest.
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