Elmina

A confusing film. It looks like a soapy Ghanaian feature – true in a way – but it also comes across as a work by the Western artist Douglas Fishbone. Is the film the work of this Fishbone or of the Ghanaian director Emmanuel Apea Jr? In this the makers are deliberately unclear.
The white American artist Fishbone, who works in London, plays a role as Ato, a local inhabitant in the small Ghanaian harbour town of Elmina. His race is prohibited in an absurd and confusing way. In his dialogues, Ato assumes that he is a black Ghanaian, but his presentation does not hide the fact that he is a white Westerner. The effect is comic, but the humour is dry and more absurd than funny.
Elmina could be the first African coastal town from which Europeans started their colonisation of the continent. The corrupt tribal chief of the town wants to persuade the population to sell their country to a Chinese oil company. The Chinese take over the former role of the Europeans.

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