Post-Memory, Post-Archive: Nigerian Film History (1960s–1980s) – Eleven Contemporary Perspectives

Under the title “Post-Memory, Post-Archive: Nigerian Film History (1960s–1980s)” the Goethe Institut Nigeria convened a fellowship in 2024 and 2025, conceived in collaboration with the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFA) and its National Film, Video and Sound Archive (NFVSA) in Jos. The program provided a group of Nigerian filmmakers and cultural producers with access to audiovisual collections, most of which were previously unknown to them. It opened with a five-day workshop in Lagos, directed by filmmaker and critic Didi Cheeka, followed by visits to the NFVSA in Jos and to the National Archive, the Archive of Sound and Vision at the Institute of African Studies, and to the New Culture Studios in Ibadan.

Mentorship was provided by Didi Cheeka, the film director Abba Makama, and Professor Onookome Okome. Of the twelve projects that received funding, eleven films have been completed and were premiered at the Cineplex of the Nigerian Film Corporation in Lagos. Following the premieres, the program made a seven-city tour throughout Nigeria. The films largely consist of uncatalogued image and sound material. The analog archive materials exhibit clear signs of deterioration and were used in the films in this unrestored condition.

The films will be shown during the festival throughout the day in the small foyer of Arsenal cinema.

A BODY IN METAPHOR, Amanda Madumere, Nigeria 2025, 15 min.
The film is an experimental documentary – that interrogates the visual history of African cinema and how it has framed the female body as a symbol, site, and silence. Combining Nigerian archival film footage, a critical essay, and performance-based movement, the film meditates on the politics of beauty, power, and gaze.

BETWEEN SHADOWS AND LIGHT, Babatunde Tribe & Ogunwale Oladapo, Nigeria 2025, 54 min.
This documentary delves into the evolution of queer representation in Nollywood – from harmful caricatures and dehumanizing tropes to nuanced, empathetic portrayals – exploring how cultural, political, and industry forces shape narratives about identity in Nigeria.

COMMON GROUNDS, Philip Fagbeyiro, Nigeria 2025, 38 min.
From pre-colonial family compounds to the pulsating rhythm of modern street markets, this documentary journeys through the ways Lagosians reimagine their environment. With gentle reflection on enduring practices, the film reveals how the wisdom of the past can shape modern placemaking and offers vital insights for Lagos’ future urban policies.

FESTAC ’77, EXPLORATION OF HERITAGE, Yusuf Ishaya, Nigeria 2025, 20 min.
In 1977, artists, thinkers, writers, musicians, poets and performers from across Africa and the diaspora gathered in Lagos and Kaduna to celebrate Black identity, unity and creativity. The Festival was called The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, inviting 16,000 artists, performers and intellectuals to showcase the rich cultural, artistic and historical realities of the Black race. This film brings back to us some of these performances, with all the energy, voices, soul and spirit of a people gathered in celebration of their reclamation of identity. It is about art, pride and memory.

KEHINSOKUN, Midé Gbádégẹṣin, Nigeria 2025, 25 min.
KEHINSOKUN is a Yoruba photoplay drama about a very wealthy man who is also an armed robber. The film refers to Atọ́ka, the Yoruba photoplay magazine, which dominated the Southwestern media space in the 1960s until 1980s. The film seeks to transform Atọ́ka photoplay magazines into animated films with a focus on plays edited by Hubert Ogunde and Duro Ladipo.

MEMOIRS OF THE SOIL, Eieke Bolaji, Nigeria 2025, 18 min.
MEMOIRS OF THE SOIL is an experimental film that moves between archival documentary and poetry. It revisits forgotten agrarian histories of Nigeria, piecing together fragments of the cocoa economy, industrial expansion and country’s shift to oil dependency.

NO LET THEM DIE, Ogochukwu Umeadi, Nigeria 2025, 30 min.
In a nation where libraries crumble and film reels rot, this experimental documentary journeys through Nigeria to uncover its living archives – stories passed down by word of mouth, memory etched in rituals, and history carried in the body. The film challenges what an archive is and insists that Nigeria’s soul survives in the everyday lives of its people, not just in neglected institutions.

OUR BODIES, NIGERIA’S GHOSTS, Rose Abba, Nigeria 2025, 20 min.
What happens when a historian’s body remembers what institutions and formal archives forget? Through documentary, performance, and reworked archival footage, this film explores how the body comes to speak the language of power, community, and survival.

PALIMPSEST OF HER FLESH, Ebimoboere Ibinabo Dan-Asisah, Nigeria 2025, 12 min.
A speculative experimental film that explores womanhood through an individualistic, fragmented lens. Told in four distinct voices – Past, Present, Future, and Eternal – the film weaves together poetic narration, archival footage, contemporary footage and textured soundscapes into a hypnotic meditation on memory, silence, becoming and resistance. Rooted in Yoruba spiritual storytelling and Dominican chant cadence, it navigates personal and collective histories inscribed on the female body, treating it as both vessel and archive. 

RE:CONSTRICTIONS, Ese Emmanuel, USA/2025, 6 min.
In 1977, the Odum, now a largely forgotten festival, took place in Rivers State, Nigeria, as a satellite event of FESTAC. The history of the festival is linked to the experience of two Okrika fisherpeople who witnessed the dance of boa constrictors in the river and translated the encounter into a mechanical reconstruction: a littoral masquerade belonging to both land and water. re:constrictions proposes an approach to reading the archive as a reconstructive exercise, shaped by obliquities, mismatched traces, and obscured memory.

REFLECTION OF MEMORY: PRESERVING NIGERIAN CINEMA, Abiodun Osho, Nigeria 2025, 20 min.
REFLECTION OF MEMORY is a poetic documentary that explores the intersection of cinema, memory, and national identity in Nigeria. It journeys through forgotten archives, silenced traumas, and the legacy of state-sponsored forgetting, tracing how Nigeria’s film heritage holds the power to restore what history tried to erase.