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

  • Matthias De Groof,
  • Kathleen Gyssels

DOI
https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.CCN.6-2.10
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 2
pp. 112 – 123

Abstract

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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.