Review: The Burial of Kojo
The Burial of Kojo
I had the opportunity to view The Burial of Kojo with the director, Sam Blitz Bazawule also known as Blitz the Ambassador at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. During a Q&A that followed the film, Blitz mentioned that among his many influences was L.A. Rebellion filmmaker and Howard University professor, Haile Gerima.
Gerima has talked extensively about cinema as a language. Specifically, about how people of color should use their language and their accent to inform cinematic language in the films that they make as opposed to the traditional 3-act structure of most films. We can see this perspective on storytelling at play in The Burial of Kojo.
The film focuses on the conflict of two brothers, Kojo and Kwabena, which is told through the eyes of Kojo’s daughter, Esi, who is a young child when the conflict unfolds. Esi doesn’t realize it at the time, but she is tasked with protecting her father from his brother who mysteriously returns and convinces Kojo to participate in illegal gold mining. The story takes a turn when we find that what we thought was Kwabena was really the ghost of Kojo’s guilty conscious which ultimately led to his demise.
Filmed and set in Ghana, Blitz held himself to a very high standard of storytelling as he knew his fellow Ghanaians would be watching. Even though I’ve never stepped foot in Ghana, I don’t think this story could have been told any other way. Blitz uses Ghanaian culture and symbolism along with Kojo’s unreliable, guilty conscious - plus the fantastic imagination of a young girl who is very close to her father to shape the structure of what becomes The Burial of Kojo. Asserted by Gerima, filmmakers have a responsibility to use their language and their accent to weave the structure of the films that they make. Blitz proudly accepted this responsibility, taking us on a journey through familial struggle, romantic unrest, and the discord between the colonizer and the colonized.
The Burial of Kojo is currently streaming on Netflix.
