Togoland Projections

Shortly before World War I, a first-of-its-kind film expedition financed by wealthy mercantile families left from Hamburg for West Africa, to the German colony of Togo. Director and “Africa researcher” Hans Schomburgk and actor Meg Gehrts shot narrative adventure films there, as well as documentaries of life in the so-called model colonies. More than a century later, another film team travels to the region. With a mobile cinema, they visit the original locations and show Schomburgk’s films to a Togolese audience for the first time. What do the images tell us about that era? What do they leave out? The reactions are manifold. Following the path of Meg Gehrt’s travelogues, the film traces their journey through Togo and asks the question: to whom do the images actually belong? In this way, the light of the film projector shines not only on colonial history, but also on the confrontation with that history in Togo itself.