Dahomey, dir. Mati Diop, Benin/France/Senegal, 2024, 67 min.
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Genevieve Yue writes:
"A deep, strange voice pervades Mati Diop’s Dahomey. This voice is ascribed to a statue of King Ghézo, from the Kingdom of Dahomey, stolen by the French during their colonial plunder of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the film is ostensibly a documentary, the king narrates his memory of abduction, exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly, and eventually his journey to a homeland that has been irrevocably reshaped. The conceit of giving an art object a voice has a startling effect; it raises the possibility of an awareness, a consciousness, and a continuity that extends beyond the lifetimes of the humans that have carried out its dispossession. It has no proper place, least of all in a documentary. But this is what gives it disruptive power. To hear it – to be able to hear it – is to realise it was always there, quiet, until the moment it willed historical rupture."
Genevieve Yue is an associate professor of culture and media at The New School. She is an independent programmer and the author of Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (2020) and Trains, which will be available autumn 2026.
This event is part of the public programme of Elisa Giardina Papa: She Flickered In and Out of History.
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Wed, 26 Aug 2026
Cinema 2
06:30 pm
Wed 26 Aug, 6:30pm
Ticket includes free exhibition entry on the same day.
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Genevieve Yue
