TIFF 2025: Ben Proudfoot’s “The Eyes of Ghana” is a Return to Ghana’s Edited History

Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana had its world premiere at the documentary section of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.  The feature-length documentary film is partly a biopic of Chris Hesse, one of Ghana’s veteran filmmaker and Kwame Nkrumah’s personal cameraman and a capsuled history of Ghana’s independence journey, economic and cinema boom and the state-approved  erasure of Nkrumah’s legacy in Ghana’s history and Ghanaian consciousness. In this way, the documentary made by the Oscars-winning documentary filmmaker is inadvertently about Nkrumah’s political journey, his relentless push for a thriving Ghanaian film industry and economic independence.  Framed from Hesse’s perspective, the often celebratory documentary film returns to the Ghanaian audio-visual archive–over 1300 thought-to-be-lost reels–which Hesse has been a custodian of, to capture the power of cinema in preserving personal and national memory and its role in building cultural and national identity as envisaged by Nkrumah. Hesse is at the twilight of his life and the documentary not just honours his decades-long interest of digitizing Ghana’s archive but creating effort towards its continuous screening at The  Rex Cinema, an outdoor cinema situated in Accra.  

That cinema holds social, cultural and political utility is an often reiterated point in the documentary. The Eyes of Ghana is a repository of archival footage that captures the transcendental and cultural importance of cinema in a country.  The archival materials point at Nkrumah’s understanding of cinema as not just an entertainment medium but capable of causing social and political changes. In an interview with Culture Custodian, Proudfoot and Anita Afonu, who doubles as a subject and producer of the documentary film, spoke about the power of cinema. Using Queen of Basketball, his Academy-Award-winning documentary for reference, Proudfoot mentions how he witnessed the social and cultural impact that the documentary had on Lucy Harris’ career.  Harris is the first and only black woman to be drafted into the NBA(before the WNBA was established) but was largely unknown and uncelebrated. The documentary which won the Oscars months after Harris’ passing brought Harris unprecedented recognition for her role as a pioneer in Basketball. “The film brought Harris into a cultural conversation and made people want to connect with her story. Cinema, especially documentaries, can be a conduit and open a pathway between people who want to know a story and people who live the story.” Using Ghana’s political history, Afonu mentions that after the coup that ousted Nkrumah was successful, it was followed by a conscious erasure of Nkrumah’s legacy and footprints in the country. The deliberate destruction of films and books about him was a conscious censorship act which the documentary filmmaker contends is instructive in understanding the sociopolitical importance of cinema.  

As Nkrumah’s laudable post-independence efforts towards building a Ghanaian film industry equipped with film schools, equipment, cinema locations and a loyal indigenous audience are emphasized, the documentary film returns to the importance of having a national and continental funding opportunities for African filmmakers. The importance of governmental funding opportunities that African filmmakers have spoken about get placed in perspective. The documentary shows that not only is a government-funded national cinema important to building national and cultural pride, it’s also pertinent to ensuring that African filmmakers are entangled in the neocolonial web that Western and foreign grants cast. It ensures that African filmmakers can tell African stories without being concerned about what the West or foreign funders and institutions think. But, as the documentary shows, this governmental interest in cinema died a natural death after Nkrumah’s ousting from power. The drastic effect of this is varied. On a personal level, Ghanaians interested in filmmaking have had to rely on personal efforts to train themselves and the once-blooming film culture that nourished Ghanaians on Ghanaian films died a natural death. On an institutional and structural level, it has made the building of a thriving Ghanaian film industry and loyal audience impossible. And on a national and economic level, the contribution that cinema can give to Ghanaian GDP.  All these are structural factors responsible for the almost absence of a thriving and enduring national cinema identity and film industry that’s obtainable in Ghana and other neighbouring African countries unmindful of the relentless work done by individual filmmakers.

The Eyes of Ghana is also about the ethics of the archive.  It raises questions about who controls and determines what’s deposited in the archive. Why should we trust what’s in the archive? These questions make it important to ask if the archive can be trusted or if we should hold what the archive preserves in contempt. Proudfoot and Afonu don’t think documentary filmmakers, researchers and journalists should bring any level of skepticism towards the sacredness attached to what’s in the archive. 

Although documentaries try to be objective to an extent, they are also rather subjective. What subjects, themes and issues get emphasized by a documentary filmmaker is tainted with some level of subjectivity. As highlighted in the documentary, Hesse as a civil servant who personally worked with Nkrumah was “ordered” by Nkrumah on what to record or not. In fact, they have a shorthand code for communicating what gets filmed and not. This continues the conversation about the kind of approach that should be brought towards interrogating the archive. Speaking about this, Afonu interpreted this to mean Nkrumah wanting Hesse to film the best parts of Ghana. She extended this further to say, in her practice as a documentary filmmaker, she wouldn’t also want to film an unflattering image of Ghana.  “Nkrumah, I imagined at that time, was trying to put Ghana and Ghanaians in a positive light because the colonizers have done a terrible job of painting Ghana and Ghanaians in negative lights.”

Responding to this, Proudfoot, like Hesse mentioned in the documentary, can’t prove anything. What Hesse did was to film Nkrumah’s life from his point of view and it’s the audiences’ responsibility to engage with it anyway they deem fit. As a documentary filmmaker, who gets omitted is almost more important than who a documentary includes. What’s critical is preserving history and opening it up for varying interpretations. “Media literacy and critical thinking is important for humanity to thrive. Access to historical happenings and people being endowed with an independent mind to think critically and ask difficult questions are critical.” 

As documentary filmmakers, censorship is anathema to the profession. One of the cultural duties of documentary filmmakers is to record history and to tell the story of what’s going on. This they do as journalists and filmmakers, which is more subjective than journalism. The importance of truth telling makes it extremely dangerous to have a coordinated and government-imposed silencing of dissenting opinions in history.  As Proudfoot mentioned, this is a growing issue in the United States where you have the government attempting to systematically give oxygen to one point of view and stifle others in public media. As the director continues, history has shown that unmindful of the efforts of powerful people and empires attempt at suppressing history and storytellers, it’s impossible to hold them hostage. “Truth always comes out and when it does, it makes for a compelling story. Thus, it’s our conviction to keep making films, recording history and putting ink to paper in a bid to record and preserve records.”

The recorded history needs to be preserved for posterity. And, this is what makes Hesse’s preserved films valuable for the current and future generations. The films captured the political happenings of the 50s and 60s in Ghana. It poses the question of the extent of Nkrumah’s democratic or  despotic tendencies as a  ruler. For the audiences watching the films, they can come to their interpretation after watching The Eyes of Ghana and Hesse’s digitalized films. “Historical records are human rights and as a documentary filmmaker, I vehemently oppose any government effort to silence and suppress speech and historical records,” Proudfoot concluded.  

When governmental or personal efforts are made towards suppressing history, it reminds Afonu of the Streisand effect, where attempts at suppressing something further publicises it. Afonu opined that the Streisand effect can be used to understand the attempt at dumping down on history. And, as a documentary filmmaker driven by curiosity to preserve history, censorship and suppression of history made it hard to do so. History is important and documentary films are audio-visual references of who we are. Hesse’s films are proof of the identity-shaping nature of documentary films. The films capture  important parts of Ghanaian history and whether the recorded history is right or wrong is up to the audience.  But, the existence and accessibility of the recorded material means judgment can be passed on it. “It’s important that we document history so that we can have references future generations can learn from.”  

The Eyes of Ghana ended with The Rex Cinema managed by Mr. Addo being renovated and hosting Ghanaians to a screening of Hesse’s forgotten works about Ghanaian history.  Only 15 minutes from the over 300 hours footage of Ghana archive, in uncertain states in London, made it The Eyes of Ghana. There is over 100 hours of footage presumed lost. Despite the tragic nature of this loss, The Eyes of Ghana team have decided to reinvest 100% of the film’s profit into digitizing over 1000 films in the Ghana archive and making it accessible,  worldwide,  for free and restoring the Rex Cinema and endowing its future – an operating fund for the Rex’s permanent sustainability. For Proudfoot, this move is important to further extend the lifespan of the films. Film festival audiences are important. But, the general audience is  important in adding meaning to what a film represents. The team wanted to have a shared communal feeling of watching films. “Cinema connects us on an individual level and by taking this move and organizing screenings around the films, we wanted to capture this.”