Screenings:
Sunday, November 1, 2:00 PM

Ben Proudfoot | USA | 2026 | 90m
English, Twi, and Ga with English subtitles

Chris Hesse served as the personal cameraman to the first president of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. In 1966, at the onset of a CIA-backed coup, Nkrumah was removed from power, and the footage that Hesse had spent a decade capturing was burned by the coupmakers. All was lost. Or so they thought.

For decades, Chris Hesse has preserved a staggering number of reels documenting Ghana's liberation story — marking it as the single largest existing archive on the subject.

Ben Proudfoot’s stunning new feature documentary follows 93-year-old documentarian Chris Hesse as he races against blindness and time to rescue and repatriate a secret trove of over 1,300 films that captured the birth of African independence in the fifties and sixties. Yet unseen by the public, these films may not only rewrite Ghanaian and African history—but world history itself.

"A touching paean to the power of the artform and the people behind it." - Murtada Elfadl, Variety

"Hesse is infectiously charismatic, and seeing 15 minutes of his film footage digitized for the first time is a treat for history buffs." - Christian Zilko, IndieWire

Tickets $12 ($11.40 at the door if available)