‘The Eyes Of Ghana’ review: Warm documentary profiles Ghanian cinematographer Chris Hesse

Dir: Ben Proudfoot. Canada. 2025. 90mins

As the non-public cameraman for Kwame Nkrumah, the primary president of the newly unbiased state of Ghana, through the Nineteen Fifties and 60s, Chris Hesse had a entrance row seat for a number of the most vital moments in Africa’s twentieth century historical past. However he most well-liked to stay behind the digital camera – till now. Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Proudfoot’s wealthy, celebratory movie pays tribute to Hesse’s contribution to capturing Ghana on movie because the veteran cinematographer, now in his 90s, passes the baton of his information, and his again catalogue, to a brand new era of Ghanaian filmmakers.

Affectionate, if standard method

The Eyes Of Ghana screens in London following a premiere in Toronto and a run of US festivals. Canadian filmmaker Proudfoot has a knack for showcasing inspirational however largely unknown figures. He has two Oscars to his identify, each earned for documentary quick movies: 2023’s The Final Restore Store shone a lightweight on 4 unsung figures who made it their mission to carry music to schoolchildren; The Queen Of Basketball (2021) instructed the story of a pioneering feminine Olympian basketball participant.

With its themes of Africa reckoning with and wrenching freed from its colonial previous, regardless of a good quantity of resistance and interference on the a part of the US and Europe, The Eyes Of Ghana has a thematic kinship with each Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack To A Coup D’Etat and Mati Diop’s Dahomey, if not the identical ingenious formal verve or creativity. However Proudfoot’s affectionate, if standard method, along with the Obama stamp of approval (Barack and Michelle Obama are listed as government producers), ought to make this an accessible and warmly obtained title at additional festivals.

Kwame Nkrumah is a contentious determine in Ghanaian historical past, branded by some as a dictator who was out of contact with the folks of his nation. However he grasped the significance of cinema in constructing a cultural id, and invested closely in a cinema infrastructure, together with a movie studio. Hesse, who accompanied him all over the world, noticed him as a pressure for change, an idealist who had a dream of a ’United States of Africa’, free from the constructions of European colonialism.

Hesse’s eyes at the moment are beginning to fail, with glaucoma threatening to rob him of his sight. And the archive of movie that he shot was destroyed following the army coup that deposed Kwame Nkrumah from energy in 1966. However Hesse has two secret weapons. One is a pointy thoughts and a eager reminiscence. The opposite is the truth that the numerous negatives, together with highly effective footage of Nkrumah addressing the UN, stay safely saved in an archive in London.

The documentary follows a number of strands, one among which is Hesse’s quest – supported by filmmaker Anita Afonu – to get his archive digitised and made obtainable for the subsequent era of Ghanaian filmmakers and historians. One other digs right into a separate side of Ghana’s movie legacy: the cinemas. The Rex, as soon as a well-liked out of doors venue in Accra, Ghana’s capital metropolis, has fallen into disrepair. Guarding it from the builders who threaten to tug it down is caretaker Edmund Addo, one other older statesman of Ghana’s cinema tradition.

The change of concepts provides the movie its important vitality: Hesse lectures to an appreciative viewers of younger Ghanaian filmmakers and encourages them to ask questions of him. And his friendship with Afonu is a nourishing mixture of affection, mutual respect and shared objectives. However the movie’s major promoting level is Hesse’s fascinating restored archive, solely fifteen minutes of which seem within the movie. Earnings from this image can be reinvested within the ongoing restoration venture, with the goal of digitising Hesse’s remaining negatives and making them obtainable for the world to see.