Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Media Studies (Nov 2015)
Give Me Back My Black Dolls: Damas’ Africa and Its Museification, From Poetry to Moving Pictures
Abstract
This essay links Léon-Gontran Damas’ poetry to Matthias De Groof’s experimental film, Rendez-les moi, which is based on Damas’ poem “Limbé.” By offering an interpretation of “Limbé” in relation to the museification of African artifacts, the film frames the re-evaluation of Damas as artistic intervention. Kathleen Gyssels engages the way the visual experimentation tries to galvanize Damas’ artistic vision and focuses on the figure of Damas’ black dolls as a metaphor for gendered discrimination, thereby moving beyond classic antagonisms of Négritude.