The Albertine Cinémathèque, brought to us by the French Department, has once again come and gone, screening six films over the course of three weeks. The theme this year- a pro pos of current events- was Global Justice; Past and Present, featuring films which tackle extant mechanisms of colonialism, racism, and genocide, while also highlighting the bravery and resistance which inevitably follow. Each of the directors works in and has deep, if not troubled, ties to France demonstrated through their film making in both form and content.
Among the films showcased were Mati Diop’s “Dahomey” (2024) and Rithy Pahn’s “Meeting With Pol Pot” (2024), both of which I was lucky enough to catch in our very own Weissberg Theater. “Dahomey” is a documentary film detailing the repatriation of several historically significant artifacts which once belonged to the kingdom of Dahomey, located in present day Benin. These artefacts were taken by French colonialists over a period of three-hundred years and put on display in overseas museums. “Meeting With Pol Pot”, on the other hand, is a narrative film partially adapting the book “When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution” by Elizabeth Becker. The movie covers a group of three French journalists as they were invited to conduct an exclusive interview with Khmer Rouge regime leader Pol Pot. The journalists, however, quickly get caught in a web of propaganda, violence, and state enforced terror.
Both films utilize a litany of experimental techniques in order to convey meaning to the viewer. For example, “Dahomey” employs a hybrid story structure, fusing fantasy elements with documentary and putting the past in dialogue with the present. A statue of King Ghezo, one of the 26 artifacts to be repatriated, is given a voice by which to speak to the audience. In a layered performance by Haitian poet Makenzy Orcel, the King-Statue laments his fate, consigned to a foreign archive, thousands of miles removed from his homeland, and kept in temporal stasis; a literal eternal darkness. “Dahomey” follows the statue’s journey across continents, documenting its fraught homecoming. By bringing this mythical element into the documentary form, Diop suggests that the actually-present here-and-now is always troubled by the what-was and what-is-to-come. She reminds us that the objective and objectifying lens of the camera can only capture so much, that what is seen may be only a fragment or distortion of the truth. In an interview Diop says, “I was able to experience through Dahomey the infinite potential of cinema as a tool of reappropriation, of rewriting history.” She enacts this generative rewriting through a moment of archaization, or counter-archaization, a telling of events that really did happen without reducing it to mere information; capturing the whole picture, even the parts we can’t see. To watch is to remember, and to remember is revolutionary. In this way, she deftly constructs a narrative which runs counter to hegemonic conceptions of history, conceptions in which the brutality of colonialism is censored and repressed. Moreover, the film is pervaded by afro-futurist messaging and aesthetics, from the score mixed by virtuoso multi-genre artist Dean Blunt to the neon-soaked streets of Benin’s nightlife. Diop, niece of revolutionary Senegalese film-maker Djibril Diop Mambéty and undergoing advanced training at Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art in France, is no doubt steeped in theoretical texts, and employs a certain politics woven into the very materiality of the film. Here, form and content intersect to comprise a complex matrix of worldmaking. To this effect, much of the run-time is made up of a student debate organized on the topic of art repatriation. While some felt that the returning objects signified a victory, others were more skeptical. Some even thought that this return was a political move, meant to demonstrate the paternalistic benevolence of the French Government. Of this scene, Diop says “. . .debate and free speech within society was something that was slowly being threatened by censorship from the government. So it was not easy to find students who, in addition to having a singular point of view on the restitution. felt at ease with speaking out. It was almost a militant act and I needed them to be aware of it.” By threading together the aesthetic and political, Dahomey deftly navigates a geography and genealogy of colonialism in a brilliantly realized constellation of a film.
“Meeting with Pol Pot”, directed by Rithy Panh, is also a visual archive of sorts. Cambodian born, Panh fled the Khmer rouge regime in his youth, eventually escaping to France where he would receive his formal education. Panh utilizes his traumatic history in democratic Kampuchea as the political foundations for his films. “Meeting With Pol Pot” dramatizes an account of three journalists sent to Democratic Kampuchea for a rare opportunity to interview enigmatic leader Pol Pot. When they arrive, however, things begin to go awry. The journalists are followed constantly by soldiers, locked in rooms, and treated in a generally sub-standard way. Eventually, the reporters realize the gravity of their mistake. They are told to ignore increasingly obvious deceptions, as staged scenes, scripted interviews, and obvious lies begin to stack up. Tensions simmer and the group begins to crack. Led by Irène Marie Jacob, known best for her work with Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Double Life of Veronique”, along with Grégoire Colin and Cyril Gueï, the trio deliver a tour de force performance, oozing with nervous paranoia and dramatic tension. One member ventures out to investigate on his own and never returns. Military officers summarily execute one another for perceived disobedience. Another journalist returns home in a coffin. The film emphasizes a quality of invisibility. The true situation, what’s really happening, is always hidden from view, either by dogma or force. Actions are justified by partisan rhetoric, familiar to what we can now recognize as a concerted disinformation campaign. No one is allowed to see the mass starvations and killings which riddle the countryside, not even the viewer. Scenes of extreme brutality are made visible only in distorted fashion, either shot from a distance or analogized by painted wooden figures. Instead of a politics of representation as employed by Mati Diop, Panh underscores the power of affective absence, the shadow of being. Mirroring the work of distortion employed by all authoritarian regimes, reality becomes warped to the ends of a suppressive power. What is meant to signify justice and order in actuality sows death and suffering. What is important to understand is how these mechanisms of censorship operate. To recognize that there are gaps in the narrative, holes in the explanations, a lack; ghosts which refuse to rest. To resist this imposed authority, Panh speaks to and with the ghosts, sits with the fact of indeterminacy. What happened to 3,000,000 Cambodians? How did they disappear? What horror was inflicted upon them? Refusing to perpetuate economies of trauma, Panh’s visual narrative tells a story of discontinuity and interruption, a story that can only be read on the interstices. This play of visuality forces the viewer to reckon with a lacuna, to sit in aporia instead of trying to unravel it.
Both films, screened as part of the Albertine Cinémathèque x Beloit College partnership, allow one to think differently about their relationship to history. Four films other than the ones discussed were shown, such as “Soundtrack to a Coup d’état”, another fantastic and transformational work. I highly encourage anyone who missed the film festival to go back and check out some of these movies and be ready for it to come back again next year. This year, the endless potential of cinema to change our reality was put on full display.
Image credit: Youtube
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