To mark Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider’s recent official visit to Nigeria, the director of the Cinémathèque suisse, Vinzenz Hediger, travelled to Lagos to finalise two long-term cooperation projects dedicated to the preservation of Nigeria’s audiovisual heritage. This mission forms part of efforts to strengthen relations between Switzerland and Nigeria in the fields of culture, education and the transfer of expertise.
The first project involves the restoration and digitisation of Kulba Na Barna (Blaming the Innocent), directed in 1992 by Brendan Shehu. Regarded as a pivotal work marking the transition from Nigerian cinema shot on film to the emergence of Nollywood, the film now survives in a single copy, held in Berlin in a fragile state of preservation. The restoration will take place in Penthaz, in the canton of Vaud – home to the Cinémathèque suisse – in partnership with the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) and the Arsenal Institute in Berlin. Nigerian professionals will take part in the project to enhance their skills in digital restoration, as part of a process of exchange and long-term cooperation. Upon completion of the project, the restored material will be returned to Nigeria. According to Vinzenz Hediger, “this film exemplifies the determination of a post-colonial African nation-state to establish its own film industry.”
In partnership with Nigeria’s Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC), the Cinémathèque suisse is also committed to preserving nearly 1,800 film and video archives from Festac ’77, a major pan-African festival dedicated to African arts and cultures, held in Lagos in 1977. As key records of the continent’s cultural history, these materials will be the subject of a digitisation and archiving programme led jointly by teams in Lagos and Penthaz.
Beyond the preservation of these unique collections, these two projects reflect the Cinémathèque suisse’s commitment to heritage cooperation based on knowledge-sharing, local capacity-building and the promotion of an audiovisual heritage of international significance.
