A love letter to Ghanaian cinema gold
Daniel Nelson
Lights! Camera! Action! Yet another film about film-making and a disused cinema: this time it’s about Ghana, and it’s a delight.
Director Ben Proudfoot hits documentary gold by finding three engaging characters and a stash of historic film stock.
The starring trio in The Eyes of Ghana are 93-year-old Chris Hesse, the man picked to film every step of ousted Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah; Edmund Addo, reclusive inhabitant of Accra’s cobwebbed Rex Cinema; and young film-maker Anita Afonu, one of Hesse’s film school pupils.
Most of the film is about Hesse’s life as Nrukmah’s chronicler, in the process creating a unique record of an important period of Africa’s modern history. After the Gold Coast became independent Ghana in 1957, paving the way for a cascade of independent African states, prime minister and then president Nkrumah tried to rapidly make up for years of exploitation and colonial neglect at home and to become an advocate of non-alignment during the Cold War division of the world. Above all, he called for Pan-Africanism.
It all came crashing down in 1966. Hesse was on a flight back from an international meeting when Nkrumah walked down the aisle to ask him, “Do you know what a coup is?”
At the end of their brief conversation, Nkrumah tells him, “Keep on filming.” They were his last words to Hesse. They could be the motto of documentary film-makers everywhere.
The coup-makers burned many of the films (and books, pamphlets and other evidence of what they deemed the former leader’s propaganda), but, recalls Hesse, “what they didn’t know was that the negatives were in London.”
The 1,300 reels remain in the British capital, waiting for funding for digitisation. About 15 minutes of the “lost” film trove are included in this documentary, which itself is a precious piece of Ghana’s history.
Hesse, who belatedly followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a pastor, is an engaging character, still full of enthusiasm for Nkrumah’s dreams.
His many anecdotes and observations include his arrangement with the peripatetic president that a particular gesture made by Nkrumah with his stick during a walkabout or a conversation signalled that it was time to start the camera rolling.
In the final section of the film, Addo moves into the spotlight. He’s a very different character. A stern man of few words, a relic, shambling around the once-glamorous derelict Rex. He admits that by becoming a virtual hermit for 20 years he has become cut-off from his children.
But thanks to Afonu and the film team, the dust and spiders are swept away, seats are dragged out of the cupboard, surfaces repainted, the outdoor screen knocked back into shape, and the Rex is lit up for a night of old films. Afonu points out that it’s the first time she has seen Addo smile.
So the film gives you entertainment and history. To an oldie like me it’s astonishing that many today do not know about Nkrumah. Ben Proudfoot used to be one of them: “I was in Accra making a film for UNICEF in the summer of 2021, and I was driving along when I saw a statue of Kwame Nkrumah,” Proudfoot said in an interview with CTV News Atlantic. “I said, ‘Who’s Kwame Nkrumah?’ And I couldn’t believe it … we just didn’t learn about him in school.”