Sankofa, Film

Katherine Olukemi Bankole

Released in 1993, Sankofa is a film written, directed, and produced by Howard University professor Haile Gerima. Considered one of the most important contributions to cinema, the film derives its name from the important Africana cultural concept Sankofa. Sankofa , an Akan term that means to return to the past and move forward, became emblematic of Black empowerment and the embrace of Africanity in the late 1980s and early 1990s among people of African descent. Sankofa the film is a realist drama depicting the horrors of the system of enslavement and the transformative and redemptive characteristic of rebellion. The plot of the film revolves around the experiences of one main character, “Mona/Shola” (Oyafunmike Ogunlano). As Mona, the character is a miseducated fashion model who finds herself transported from a modern-day photographic assignment choreographed at an ancient slave-holding castle in Ghana to the persona of Shola, a house slave on Sankofa ...

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