About this Event
This event is open to the LSE community and students or faculty affiliated with other universites. Please bring a valid university ID on the day of the event to be permitted entry.
When the founding mother of the Nso people sits in exile at Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, her children set out to bring her home, just as she once brought them to their homeland of Nso.
Join us at LSE for a screening of ŊGÒN NSO’: BRING BACK ŊGÒN NSO’, a hybrid docu-fiction directed by Akumbu L. Jones Bubuh. The screening will be followed by a discussion and audience Q&A with the director and Lauren Bursey, chaired by Tatiana Flessas.
Ŋgòn Nso’ is not simply a statue. She is the founding mother of the Nso people of Cameroon’s Grassfields, who gathered her children in Bankim and led them to Nso. Today, her bronze figure sits thousands of miles away in Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, a colonial holdover.
Through cinematic re-enactment, the film follows Ŋgòn Nso’s original journey from Bankim, her place of origin, to the Grassfields of Bamenda. This historical journey is mirrored in the present through the experiences of two female activists. Kusi travels from the Fondom of Nso to Bankim, walking Ŋgòn Nso’s route, listening to elders and documenting the origins of the Nso people. In Berlin, Sylvie Njobati takes the campaign for restitution to the Humboldt Forum
Interweaving re-enactment, reality, footage from the Humboldt Forum and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Stolen Goods” speech, the film connects personal memory with the global restitution movement. It is a film about memory, movement and who has the right to return, for people and for their ancestor.
Following the screening, director Akumbu L. Jones Bubuh will join us online for a Q&A chaired by Tatiana Flessas, providing an opportunity to discuss the making of the film and its exploration of cultural memory, colonial displacement, restitution and the importance of telling stories through the perspectives of the communities to whom they belong.
About the director
Akumbu L. Jones Bubuh is a Bamenda-based film and theatre director, writer and cultural IP advocate. He is Co-founding Director of La Liberté Arts Group and Founder of Black Swagger Inc. He created and producesCameroon’s pioneering spoken-word event, the Black Swagger Poetry Slam, and has directed several short films and documentaries, including Juvenile, Protect, Voices and ŊGÒN NSO’.
He holds degrees in Management from Bamenda University and a Diploma in Arts-Activism from the MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation in Arusha, Tanzania. He also completed an arts residency in Cape Town under ASSITEJ International at the Baxter Theatre Centre, University of Cape Town.
Discussant
Dr Lauren Bursey completed her PhD at LSE. A qualified lawyer in New York and Illinois, she previously practised at major international law firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. She currently lectures and convenes courses on art and cultural heritage law and ethics at Sotheby's Institute of Art, and has taught Law & the Arts as a guest lecturer at Columbia University. She is also the Principal Investigator for the LSE's Cultural Heritage Policy project with the LSE Legal Advice Clinic. Her research interests include art and cultural heritage law, public international law and dispute settlement. She has particular interests in the protection and trade of cultural objects, questions of ownership, restitution and repatriation, and has published the article Colonial-Looted Cultural Objects in England with the Santander Art & Culture Law Review, and submitted written evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations regarding legal options for reparations of heritage to African countries.
Chair
Dr Tatiana Flessas: Tatiana Flessas holds a BA in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a JD from Northeastern University School of Law, and an LLM and PhD from the London School of Economics. Before joining LSE, she practised law in the US and taught at the University of Reading School of Law. Her research interests are in cultural property and heritage law, law and social theory, and law and literature.
Refreshments will be provided.
Event venue & nearby stays
Mar 2.08, Marshall Building, 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, United Kingdom
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