Didi Cheeka
“Memory will break your heart, but memory will also heal you.”
The Transcript
Filmmaker, critic, and accidental archivist, Didi Cheeka is co-founder & curator of the archive-oriented arthouse platforms Lagos Film Society & Decasia - Berlin-Lagos Archive Film Festival.
His curatorial & artistic practices derive from his research and use of audiovisual archives to narrate a relationship between memory, trauma, archives.
Didi is currently engaged in researching Nigeria's half-forgotten national audiovisual archives & applying third cinema's aesthetics of liberation to contemporary archive practice & discourse.
His curatorial & artistic practices derive from his research and use of audiovisual archives to narrate a relationship between memory, trauma, archives.
Didi is currently engaged in researching Nigeria's half-forgotten national audiovisual archives & applying third cinema's aesthetics of liberation to contemporary archive practice & discourse.
Didi Cheeka is one of my heroes.
Memory Also Die (short film, MUBI)
Memory Also Die, the first part of a trilogy that focuses on memory as political taboo, comes fifty years after the collective trauma responsible for the death of memory in Nigeria: Biafra.
Reclaiming Nigeria's Audiovisual Archives: Result & Prospects (talk at Haus der Kulturen der Welt)
In this episode, we explored shared values as the glue for true belonging, Nigerians’ collective trauma, engaging history and archival studies with a psychoanalytic lens, one problem with the concept of ‘post-colonialism’, and much more. There’s a place where he says: “Each tear that is shed, that could have been avoided, is an accusation.” The spirit of apathy hates to see this one coming.
Timestamps
- 04:57 How he came to memory work
- 08:02 Taught to forget, to be numb, to fear difference, to avoid our internal truths
- 12:48 Values
- 19:18 Is dialogue enough?
- 21:19 Belonging and Community, how Nigerian Marxists coped after the fall of the Berlin Wall
- 27:52 Post-Colonialism vs. Post-Nationalism
- 34:57 The Healing Power of Archives
Full transcript to be uploaded soon.