Sankofa

The word sankofa comes from the Akan West African saying about going back as a means of moving forward. It is also the name of the griot whose drumming and invocations are entwined throughout Gerima’s masterful epic that offers a searing counter-narrative about the Atlantic slave trade.

Featuring Haile Gerima in conversation with Raafi Rivero, Daniel E. Williams, Bradford Young, moderated by Ava DuVernay.

The word sankofa comes from the Akan West African saying about going back as a means of moving forward. It is also the name of the griot whose drumming and invocations are entwined throughout Gerima’s masterful epic that offers a searing counter-narrative about the Atlantic slave trade. African American model Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano) is on a photo shoot at the ruins of a Cape Coast “slave castle” in present-day Ghana when a wrong turn sends her to the sugar cane fields of the American South and life as an 18th-century enslaved person. Offering a complex, humane portrait of a persecuted people fighting their oppressors, Sankofa challenges cinematic archetypes. A film of such import to Gerima that he named his Washington, D.C. bookstore/base after it, Sankofa privileges the voice of the subjugated.

Director: Haile Gerima. Cast: Kofi Ghanaba, Oyafunmike Ogunlano, Alexandra Duah, Nick Medley. 1993. 125 minutes. USA/Ghana/Burkina Faso/UK/Germany/Ethiopia. Color. Akan, English. DCP.

All film screenings of Imperfect Journey: Haile Gerima and His Comrades are available here.