Mati Diop

Dahomey

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One of the statues is carefully unboxed

Doing very little but saying quite a lot, Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey tracks the return of a number of artefacts from France to Benin in West Africa, which was known as Dahomey when they were first appropriated – looted, if you prefer. The fairly short film divides up into three distinct chunks. In the first, Diop’s cool, fly-on-the-wall camera follows the action as the items – wooden carvings of deities, thrones and so on – are crated up, watched over by Calixte Biah. An elegant man with a grave expression who assesses the artefacts for damage, Biah notes the condition (cracks, flaking paint etc) of the treasures and supervises as they are carefully … Read more

Simon Killer

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simonkiller

London Film Festival, 2012-10-20  Giving a film’s plot away in its title: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford did it. So, with a lot less fuss, did Snakes on a Plane. Here we have Simon Killer, about a guy called Simon, who’s a Killer. It’s a good thing we know this early on, because without the sense of “when’s he going to do it, and who’s he going to do it to?” Antonio Campos’s introspective follow-up to the nervy, pervy Afterschool might just die of a tension deficit disorder. We’re in the sort of Paris that Americans with a Hemingway bent still hanker after – of cafes and night-time … Read more