Nii Kwate Owoo: You Hide Me / Petna Ndaliko Katolondo: Matata

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Matata, film still, 2019 © Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art

The two short films by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo and Nii Kwate Owoo explore colonial violence and its ongoing impact on the present.

The November edition of Spätschicht is co-curated by artist and choreographer Ligia Lewis. In her films and performances, she explores narratives of race, gender and violence that are inscribed in bodies across generations.

In this context, Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art is presenting two short films: For You Hide Me (1970), filmmaker Nii Kwate Owoo gained access to the underground depots of the British Museum, where he filmed the valuable African artifacts stored there. Almost 40 years later, Congolese filmmaker Petna Ndaliko Katondolo shot Matata (2019). A photo shoot – in which a model reenacts a photograph taken during the brutal reign of King Leopold II in the Congo – takes an unexpected turn. Told through dance, rhythm, colour and movement, the film shifts away from prescribed representations of Africa and gestures toward a new future.

The exihibition Ligia Lewis: I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR... is on view at Gropius Bau until 18 January 2026.

Films

Nii Kwate Owoo: You Hide Me, Ghana 1970 (engl. OV, 17 min)
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo: Matata, Democratic Republic of the Congo, USA, Netherlands 2019 (without dialogue, 37 min)

Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art is a research and education centre, archive, distribution, festival and cinema. With its relocation from Potsdamer Platz to silent green Kulturquartier, Arsenal will not have its own cinema until the new one is completed in early 2026. As part of Arsenal on Location, film programs are being created in collaboration with numerous cultural institutions in Berlin, across Germany, and internationally.

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, born in 1974 in Goma, Congo, is a filmmaker, activist and lecturer. His cross-genre works are valued for their decolonial Afrofuturist style, combining historical content with contemporary socio-political and cultural themes. He is the founder of the Congo International Film Festival and of Yole!Africa, a centre for art, education and social innovation in eastern Congo. Currently,Katondolo is a visiting scholar at the Stone Center for Black History and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

Nii Kwate Owoo was born and raised in Ghana. He has been producing and directing films since the early 1970s. After graduating from the London Film School, he founded the first independent African film production company (Ifriqiyah Films) in the UK. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Écrans d'Afrique and involved in the Pan-African cinema movement. He co-produced and directed the documentary Ouaga – African Cinema Now (1988) and the feature film Ama: An African Voyage of Discovery (1991). Currently, he is working on his new docudrama series The Asante Kingdom of Gold.

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