{"id":609254,"date":"2024-02-18T18:15:25","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T15:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-mati-diops-exquisitely-strange-restitution-doc\/"},"modified":"2024-02-18T18:15:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T15:15:25","slug":"watch-mati-diops-exquisitely-strange-restitution-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-mati-diops-exquisitely-strange-restitution-doc\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a35fdbb09360\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a35fdbb09360\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-mati-diops-exquisitely-strange-restitution-doc\/#%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_Mati_Diops_Exquisitely_Strange_Restitution_Doc%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Watch Online Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc&#8221;<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-2' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-mati-diops-exquisitely-strange-restitution-doc\/#%E2%80%9CMati_Diops_Exquisitely_Strange_Restitution_Doc%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_Mati_Diops_Exquisitely_Strange_Restitution_Doc%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Watch Online Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CMati_Diops_Exquisitely_Strange_Restitution_Doc%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    In November 2021, 61 years after Benin gained independence from the French empire, 26 of the many thousands of plundered national antiquities were returned by France to their African home. Inserting an inquisitive, imaginative intelligence into this key moment in the troubled timeline of post-imperial cultural politics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop fashions her superb, short but potent hybrid doc \u201cDahomey\u201d as a slim lever that cracks open the sealed crate of colonial history, sending a hundred of its associated erasures and injustices tumbling into the light.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    The film takes its title from the kingdom on Benin\u2019s Atlantic coast, that existed in formidable militarism for 300 years until 1894, and whose fabled female warriors were recently the subject of Gina Prince-Bythewood\u2019s \u201cThe Woman King.\u201d But \u201cDahomey\u201d starts far from the pomp and grandeur of that wealthy, warlike kingdom, in the basement level of the Parisian Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly, where CCTV cameras stare down at empty, bare-walled, windowless corridors. This is where several of the artifacts, including a wooden statue of King Gezo, who ruled Dahomey in the mid-1800s and whose pose looks irresistibly like he\u2019s giving a Black Power salute, are being packed up ready for transportation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    Diop and DP Josephine Drouin Viallard follow with unobtrusive but forensic interest the procedure of packing Gezo into his crate: the care taken not to damage the idol, the paper that protects his rear like a diaper, the complicated internal construction of the box that is designed to ensure he isn\u2019t rattled in transit. Still, there\u2019s an odd feeling of wrongness \u2014 almost of insult \u2014 that Gezo is being packed face-down. Shouldn\u2019t he be able to see the light as long as possible before the lid is closed? <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    The impulse to anthropomorphize this diminutive wooden representation is clearly one Diop shares. Suddenly we are hearing the thoughts of statue-Gezo himself, voiced by Makenzy Orcel, and given an unearthly, resonating timbre by sound designers Corneille Houssou, Nicolas Becker and Cyril Holtz, as through his voice is rushing to us through long tunnels of time. He contemplates, with prideful contempt and incredulity, his long years of captivity \u201cin the caverns of the civilized world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    The interludes of Gezo\u2019s commentary are relatively short. But his haughty words, broken like shards of ancient pottery, and spoken in Fon, the Dahomey language still used by roughly one-sixth of Benin\u2019s population, flavor the whole film with mysterious unease. It haunts even the most straightforwardly observational sections such as the parade that greets the returning artifacts, or the Beninese curator cataloguing the cargo. And in the film\u2019s final section, a university-debate-style discussion in a large hall that was staged by Diop but unfolds with spontaneous authenticity, many of the contrasting views on the issues that this paltry yet pivotal act of restitution brings up, sound like modern-day echoes of the statue\u2019s own weariness and anger, its wariness and fear. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    There is a version of this film that might use the occasion as a simple promotional tool to encourage postcolonial powers to embark on greater and more complete reparations programs, but \u201cDahomey,\u201d is much more than that film. Every straightforwardly celebratory impulse is complicated by a far greater ambivalence about whether actual redress can ever be made and a kind of lyrical wonderment about what it would even look like if it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    One of the young debaters calls the return of the 26 pieces \u201ca savage insult.\u201d Another sees its motivation as solely political, a token gesture made by the French to distract from domestic pressures. And when one young woman locates the occasion\u2019s importance in how it can help to rewire the population\u2019s understanding of their own history \u2014 \u201cI was told I was descended from slaves,\u201d she says fiercely, \u201cBut I was descended from Amazons\u201d \u2014 even that triumph is tempered by Diop\u2019s careful inclusion of another of the returned artworks: an ornate Dahomey throne adorned with dozens of figurines representing the Kingdom\u2019s powerful slave trade. Dahomey, particularly under Gezo, derived a great deal of wealth and a good portion of its national identity from conquering and enslaving neighboring peoples.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n    All of this context creates a picture far more interconnectedly vast and complex than the film\u2019s 68-minute runtime suggests, but it does not lessen the simple power of certain motifs and images. A white-coated worker at the Beninese museum stops in front of the statue of King Behazin, represented as a shark, and gazes at it silently, his lips moving as though in song or prayer. There is some kind of communion with the past going on, and just as much as Diop\u2019s Cannes-awarded debut feature \u201cAtlantics,\u2019 which followed women possessed by their menfolk lost at sea, \u201cDahomey\u201d is a striking, stirring example of the poetry that can result when the dead and the dispossessed speak to and through the living.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-movies-tv-series\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch Movies &#038; TV Series <\/a><\/span>category<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2024\/film\/reviews\/dahomey-review-mati-diop-1235911765\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Watch Online Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc&#8221; &#8220;Mati Diop&#8217;s Exquisitely Strange Restitution Doc&#8221; In November 2021, 61 years after Benin gained independence from the French empire, 26 of the many thousands of plundered national antiquities were returned by France to their African home. Inserting an inquisitive, imaginative intelligence into this key moment in the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":609255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/202414781_1-e1707980600220.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watch-movies-tv-seriess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}