Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

does not belong to them. My experience signified a further attribution of
a successfully sustained colonial culture, where violations of basic human
rights are done with impunity, especially within an environment where
there were no apparent public administration regulations to monitor
such random violations of the wanton commercialization of the life of the
dispossessed, the poor, and the socially vulnerable. Critical to my experience
and observation was that copyrighting these pictures advantaged a small
élite clique, who made capital gain without the knowledge nor the
permission of those whose images were taken, and continue to be taken,
so freely displayed, so freely liberated, and appropriated. This revelation
was just a microcosm of what we know happens globally regarding the
exploitation of audiovisual indigenous cultural content and photographic
imagery, which, as an important reiteration, is mostly done for capital gain
and or academic egocentric purposes, to serve the interests of an everpresent
supremacist élite.
Having said that, the global discourse on repatriation is not enough, and
will not be wholly effective and efficiently dealt with if the concentration
of the debate centres only around the political imperatives. The discourse
on repatriation is not just about the return of the memory of a nation, it is
not only about the return of the image of the captured, it is not only about
the return of the remains of our ancestors museum-ized or mummified
in foreign institutions. Repatriation is also a spiritual journey of nationcleansing,
which has to take place, and should be a symbol of rehabilitation
and reconciliation that needs no intellectual diatribe or jargon.
What power lies in the word “repatriation”? Repatriation means the return
to our fatherland of that which belongs to us – in fact, it may even be
more appropriate to call the entire process of the return of any lost
heritage re-matriation – which would mean the return of what was lost to
its motherland. The issue at hand is: why do we want repatriation of lost
heritage? Of what value will it be to the receivers? What are we going to
do with it? Where will we place it, and how? And who will take care of it?
The filmic recordings of the life of indigenous Africa and of life elsewhere
are reputed to make substantial amounts of return on investment. I call
this return on investment, because this is the perception offshore film
archives are selling to filmmakers, who are forced to buy back their images
at lucrative amounts. This selling of stock footage to indigenous people
has made some unable to continue making films, as the lack of sufficient
budgets prevents them from buying it.
A particular case of interest occurred when a South African political
activist imprisoned in Robben Island in the early 1980s was released into a
democratic South Africa, and decided to make a biographical documentary
on his life and in memory of his deceased activist friend. He found a
newspaper article of his story, as well as a picture showing him being
shoved into a police van, which vividly brought back memories of that time.
Of course this was an important archival document, but he was refused
the right to use the picture without paying for it. The filmmaker used the
picture all the same, and vowed to meet his opponents in court.
These are the kinds of issues we need addressed and resolved, where
ownership, control, and management of recordings of film and print
images of indigenous people are concerned. As much as those who capture
10 Journal of Film Preservation / 85 / 2011