Dahomey

People We Come Across

2021

What happens when a group of Finns travel to a tiny village in Benin to participate in a vaccination study? By participating, they can aid in the development of a diarrhea vaccine for children in developing countries – and, at the same time, have a different kind of vacation in West Africa. The complicated side of helping people and the clashes between two cultures rise to the forefront of Mia Halme’s delicious documentary film.

Africa Rising

2019

How African artists have spread African culture all over the world, especially music, since the harsh years of decolonization, trying to offer a nicer portrait of this amazing continent, historically known for tragic subjects, such as slavery, famine, war and political chaos.

Serengeti Shall Not Die

1959

The film tells of the beginnings of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. At the end of the 1950s, the Tanzanian National Park Administration wanted to fence in the protected area around the Ngorongoro Crater. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the national park administration in 1957 to get a precise picture of the animal migrations and to provide the national park administration with the values ​​they needed for their project. Using a new counting method with two airplanes, the Grzimeks found out that the migration of the herds was different than assumed.

Report on the History of Ethiopia

1966

This is the second part of a four parts series of documentaries on Ethiopia made by the German television journalist Klaus Stephan in the mid 60ies.

We Who Remain

2017

Sudan, Southern Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains in Africa. Scenes from the forgotten war that the fighters of the Nuba people have held since 2011 against the government of President Omar al-Bashir and the Sudanese army, which crudely show the hard daily life of Hannan, a brave woman fighting for the survival of her family; Jordania, a promising student; Mosquito, a reckless journalist; and Al-Bagir, a rebel leader.

Surviving Clotilda

In July 1860, the schooner Clotilda slipped quietly into the dark waters of Mobile, Ala., holding 110 Africans stolen from their homes and families, smuggled across the sea, and illegally imported to be sold into slavery. Surviving Clotilda is the extraordinary story of the last slave ship ever to reach America's shores: the brash captain who built and sailed her, the wealthy white businessman whose bet set the cruel plan in motion, and the 110 men, women, and children whose resilience turned horror into hope.

Hidden Colors 5: The Art of Black Warfare

2019

The history of warfare as it relates to global Black society, broken down into 7 chapters that examines the ways the system of racism wages warfare from a historical, psychological, sexual, biological, health, educational, and military perspective.

Statues Also Die

1953

Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.