Cinéclub und Podiumdiskussion: Dahomey und Provenienzforschungen in Frankreich und Deutschland

In the organizer's words:

In November 2021, 26 works of art leave Paris, looted from the Kingdom of Dahomey by French colonial troops at the end of the 19th century, to be returned to a museum in their country of origin, today's Benin. Three years later, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for her documentary "Dahomey" about the journey of the artifacts from Paris via Cotonou to Abomey-Calavi. The film is part of a larger context of restitution claims by various actors from African countries from which numerous works of art were looted in the pre-colonial and colonial period.

For the first time, a Cinéclub screening on May 28 will be followed by a discussion to which we have invited the experts on restitution policy and provenance research, Dr. Richard Hölzl and Dechanel Kouameny Tankeu.

6pm: Screening of "Dahomey"

"Dahomey" combines fiction and reality to tell the journey of 26 Beninese artworks exhibited at the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris until 2021. Mati Diop first gives the artifacts a voice and at the same time films the careful packaging process of the works - an encounter between the sacred and the profane.

Following the official handover of the artworks in Cotonou, Mati Diop films a student discussion at the University of Abomey-Calavi. In particular, the question of whether it makes sense to keep voodoo artworks under Western conservation conditions and the relationship between the number of returned and looted cultural assets are debated.

19:20: Topics of the discussion

After the screening, two experts will discuss restitution policies and provenance research, focusing on France and Benin as well as Germany and Cameroon. What institutional measures are taken to comply with restitution requests and provenance research? How can the collections of European museums, where many works are forcibly appropriated in colonial contexts, be decolonized?

Panelists: PD Dr. Richard Hölzl (Museum Fünf Kontinente; ODAYO project) and Dechanel Kouameny Tankeu (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen).

Practical information

The film will be shown in French with German subtitles. The discussion will be held in German.

Free admission after online registration at: kultur.muenchen@institutfrancais.de

Price information:

Free admission after online registration at: kultur.muenchen@institutfrancais.de