Using rhythmic, ecstatic music and fragments of folk songs, Yasmine Djedje-Fisher-Azoume takes us to the mythic ancestors, goddesses, and guardians of the Bété people on the Ivory Coast – the place where the director’s ancestors came from. In her film study, inspired by traditional wooden sculptures and masks, she transforms these into many-shaped female characters through coal drawings and copper reliefs. Spinning, multi-faced and all-seeing, dancing in fluffy garments, they perform rituals and unfold an infectious choreography. The whole film pulses to this rhythm, so it comes as no surprise when one figure literally releases a stream of creative energy.
This stream is so strong that it extends into the present day – to a modern temple where living goddesses rotate in the endless flow of existence. Unlike the lifelessly arranged displays in European museums, witnesses of colonial violence, Djedje-Fisher-Azoume collects a pantheon here of what she honours and deeply moves. A temple that exists only for those who know their own origins and treat them with respect to derive from them strength for the presence and the future. The whole film, from the tip of its roots to the buds, is pervaded by this power of mystical self-knowledge.