Director’s Statement:
"The word 'Sankofa' comes from the Akan language. It means 'returning to your
roots, recapturing what you've lost and moving forward.' Because of the film's subject
matter, I felt Sankofa was the most appropriate title for the film.
"In Sankofa, 19th Century slavery is addressed and used as a landscape to shape
and compose a story that deals actually with the contemporary reality of African slave
descendants. Africans and African-Americans of the Diaspora have never really dealt
with the issue of slavery. It has been this nation's most neglected agenda or subject. And
so, I felt it was necessary to dramatize the subject and make a film that would in the end
be very healing for all peoples. After seeing Sankofa, many people will come to grips
with certain aspects of their own obsessions. They'll realize that they have no real outlet
in this society because this society discourages those people who want to exorcise this
historical incident. The dominant culture in this society wants to maintain the status quo
at the expense of Africans everywhere. We are told to 'march in place,' while other nonblack groups are allowed to heal, meditate, reflect and grow from their given experiences.
By making trivial the whole slavery incident, they attempt to keep us ignorant of our past.
And, if we don't know and learn from our past, what can we expect of the future?
"The recurring symbol of the bird is an important symbol in Sankofa. From nearly
20 years of research, I have found that the bird was important to both slaves and maroons.
The duality of the bird, especially the vulture, represented both life and death. For those
who escaped slavery, the vulture acted as a guide to the hills, away from the dogs, the
horses and the overseers. For those who collapsed or died along the way, the vulture ate
or devoured its prey. But then again, in death there was a certain sense of freedom to
those Africans since it was believed that the vulture would carry your spirit back to your
roots, back home to Mother Africa. Certain birth myths even tell of runaway slave who
'transformed' into birds and flew back to Africa. Whether a physical or spiritual
metamorphosis, both ideas express a fundamental sense of freedom or returning to
Africa.
"Sankofa addresses the continuing problem of those persons in the African
Diaspora who neglect their own history. In dealing with this problem, we must ask
ourselves two questions. How do we as Africans jar our 'collective memory?' And, is it
possible to learn from our collective experiences and move forward as a people? It is my
hope that this film will stimulate the necessary thought processes needed to engage in
meaningful discussion and debate about the present-day 'slavery' in which we as Africans
find ourselves."
Plot Summary:
Mona (intensely portrayed by Oyafunmike Ogunlano) is a fashion model who
enjoys a photo shoot on a sandy beach in Cape Coast, Ghana (once the second largest
slavery post in Africa). She and other tourists are confronted by a shaman drummer who
challenges them to look beyond the present and engage the sufferings of the past. Visiting
a castle's remains, Mona is suddenly and mysteriously transported to a 19th century sugar
plantation, where she becomes Shola, a house slave victimized by the landowners. Shola
timidly develops friendships with the other slaves working on the plantation (all of whom
prepare for an impending revolt), and the story revolves around the journey of selfdetermination each slave aspires toward.