N/N: Testament - True/False Film Fest

N/N: Testament

A potent look at how history haunts the present, the Collective’s second film follows a fictional broadcast journalist’s return to Ghana, which she abandoned following President Kwame Nkrumah’s thwarted experiment in African socialism.Screens for free as a part of the Neither/Nor Film Series. Neither/Nor is presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
Director: John Akomfrah
Runtime: 1:19
In-person: Sound artists Trevor Mathison & Gary Stewart
Fest Year: 2018
The Black Audio Film Collective’s first work to contain narrative fiction elements, Testament is an understated yet palpably heartfelt exploration of the myriad, often excruciatingly painful intersections between personal, national, and cultural memory. Abena (a watchful Tania Rogers) is an English-raised Ghanaian broadcast journalist who returns to her home country two decades after the 1966 deposition of Ghana’s first socialist revolutionary president, Kwame Nkrumah. Abena seeks out old friends, some of whom are less than pleased to see her, and revisits long-buried memories stemming from the event’s devastating fallout. Testament is not a long film, yet its fragmented narrative, somehow simultaneously dense and economical, contains entire worlds, locating beauty and emotional resonance in its sensitive exploration of what it means to be “home.” (AC)Screens for free as a part of the Neither/Nor Film Series. Neither/Nor is presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.