The screening will be followed by a discussion with film director Nii Kwate Owoo and a panel on the current state of museum restitutions, featuring Vjera Borozan (AVU), Vojtěch Šarše (Center for African Studies, Charles University), Edwin Otta (Acra Art Week), Kafui Danku (National Film Authority of Ghana), and Kwesi Essel-Blankson (Ghana Museums & Monuments Board).

The program is organised in cooperation with the Institute of Contemporary History of the CAS with the support of the Academy of Sciences and the Programme Strategy AV21. Introductory words by H.E. Theresa Adjei-Mensah, Ghanaian Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and historian Jakub Mazanec (Institute of Contemporary History, CAS).

You Hide Me, režie Nii Kwate Owoo, Ghana, UK, 1970, DCP, 16 min.

In 1970, Ghanaian filmmaker Nii Kwate Owoo gained access to the British Museum’s underground storage facilities and filmed the extensive collection of African artifacts hidden in its basement. Owoo entered the secret vaults, where cultural objects of incalculable value were stored in plastic bags and wooden crates. In a single day, he shot this short but powerful film, which reveals not only the hypocrisy of colonial power but also the surprising extent of stolen African heritage. Banned for its anti-British sentiments, the film makes a compelling case for the immediate return of African cultural artifacts.

You Can’t Hide Me  – The Return of the Looted and Stolen Artefacts in the British and the Fowler Museum in the US, režie Nii Kwate Owoo, Ghana, 2024, DCP, 20 min.

Nearly five decades later, Ghanaian filmmaker Nii Kwate Owoo follows up on his cult film You Hide Me (1970), which he made while still a film school student in London.  The new film summarizes the efforts made so far to restitute and repatriate African art from European and North American collections.

English only

Free entry