From Film to Ritual

Our work combines artistic interventions, filmmaking, and dialogue-based research to blur the boundaries between art, ritual, and social inquiry. Our contribution to the Repatriates project grows out of the film- and community-based dialogues we have developed over many years in Namibia through collaborations with artists, researchers, and cultural institutions, and, more recently, through our involvement in the Artistic Research and Communal Knowledge (ARCK) phase of the project Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures (CCPECF).^[1] In particular, we followed the process through which Namibian communities and artists were invited to directly engage with the twenty-three cultural belongings repatriated from Germany in 2022.^[2] Among these items was a small doll-like figure that resonated with some participants, opening an unexpected point of connection between debates within ARCK to the artistic explorations of Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. The Namibian artist Tuaovisiua Katuuo included her interpretations in the ARCK exhibition in the form of different versions of the doll. When Khadija visited Namibia for the exhibition launch, she facilitated an initial doll-making session that tested how creative practice might serve as a bridge between repatriated heritage and contemporary artistic production. Building on this moment, we developed a doll-making workshop that focused not only on making new dolls but on revealing the meanings, memories, and ancestral stories that dolls hold across different regions of Namibia. In this context, our filming and photography formed part of the artistic process itself, documenting gestures, exchanges, and acts of making as forms of testimony, rather than producing an ethnographic record.

In partnership with Repatriates, we organized a three-day doll-making workshop in August 2024 at the Creative Industry Institute Africa (CIIA) in Windhoek, bringing together fourteen Namibian regional artisans and fourteen University of Namibia (UNAM) art students to work in pairs and create traditionally inspired dolls.^[3] Each artisan arrived with locally sourced materials such as goat hide, offcuts of school uniform fabric, beads, plant fibers, and recycled wire, as well as with stories and memories. Rather than reproducing historical types, the participants transformed these traditions into new forms that reflected their regions, families, and beliefs.

We approached this process not as filmmakers collecting footage but as collaborators in a shared act of recovery and creation. The cameras, both still and moving, became a quiet witness to gestures of sewing, touching, and storytelling, recording making itself as testimony rather than illustration. This collaboration continued our commitment to exploring how creative practice can act as a form of restorative ritual, expanding restitution beyond institutions and into lived, participatory processes. Through witnessing the negotiations surrounding the returned cultural belongings, the many continued conversations, and the relationships and collaborations that formed from the doll-making workshop, we came to a shared conviction: True restitution can never just be symbolic. It must be rooted in agency—agency over our stories, our processes, and the evolution and healing of our cultures. This principle guided our contribution to Repatriates, where making and meaning-making became inseparable, and where artistic practice opened forms of repair that institutional processes alone cannot sustain.

Our commitment to collaboration is both philosophical and deeply practical. During CCPECF and ARCK, and later through the Repatriates doll workshops, we worked closely with the participating artists, artisans, and cultural practitioners both during the project and long after. Since we did not produce a final film from the doll workshop, there were no rough cuts to share. However, the conversations, feedback, and exchanges with participants continued. We remain involved with several of the artisans and students, supporting their work when possible, even beyond the boundaries or timelines of a single project.

For us, collaboration does not end with the formal conclusion of a program; it requires continuity, responsiveness, and care, especially in contexts shaped by historical erasure and unequal access to resources.

Our relationship to communities is never one of representation in the singular sense. Namibia is not one community but many, with different histories, languages, and lived experiences of colonialism and its aftermath. We do not claim to speak for each of these communities. We work in dialogue with the individuals, elders, artisans, youth, and knowledge keepers who choose to collaborate with us. Our perspectives as coauthors come from different but intertwined positions: one grounded in lived Namibian experience, the other shaped by diasporic realities. These perspectives sharpen our reflexive practice. For us, reflexivity means actively questioning how our locations, privileges, and limitations shape our work. Self-reflexivity is the practical work that precedes and follows, adjusting modes of engagement, filming (or choosing not to film), slowing down, stepping back, or shifting emphasis to uphold shared authorship and cultural agency.

Some of the most meaningful exchanges take place outside formal settings. Our office, kitchen, and garden often become informal studios where collaborators arrive as themselves rather than as representatives of institutions or communities. These conversations rarely enter the final work directly, yet they ground our practice in trust, honesty, and sometimes necessary discomfort. This blurred boundary between life and work shapes how we cocreate, not only as partners in production but as facilitators of dialogue and collective healing within and beyond the repatriation process.

 

Kaudife: Namibia’s very soil carries the weight of colonial conquest, apartheid segregation, and systemic exclusion wounds written into our languages, landscapes, and bodies. Growing up, I felt the echoes of forced land dispossession and erased spiritual traditions in every corner of my homeland. On camera and behind it, I confront that legacy. Playing the role of young Sam Nujoma in Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (2007) was my way of stepping into history.^[4] The film, based on the biography of Namibia’s founding president, is regarded as a landmark pan-African film project and the only cinematic portrayal of Namibia’s modern history at that scale. The production employed hundreds of Namibians across the acting, technical, costume, and art departments, pairing local crews with international collaborators, especially from African countries and the diaspora, and significantly expanding the capacities of the national film industry. As the first state-funded cinematic retelling of the liberation struggle, it marked a turning point in how Namibians saw themselves represented on screen and how the local film industry imagined its future. Being part of that project shaped my understanding of storytelling as a political and communal act—one rooted in reclaiming voice, memory, and historical agency.

Later, serving as executive producer for The Measure of Men (2023), a brutal reenactment of German colonial atrocities, became my way of forcing us to face the past.^[5] The film follows a German anthropologist through the genocide in Namibia in the early twentieth century while acknowledging the role that science and academia played. It also positions the Holocaust as a continuation of colonial violence.

Each film is an act of lived resistance, an effort to surface hidden stories, give form to inherited trauma, and amplify the resilience pulsing through Namibian communities. My camera becomes both a mirror and a bridge. When I speak of “my camera,” I refer not only to literally holding a camera but to my relationship with it in front of it as an actor and behind the scenes as a producer, shaping, contributing to, and at times negotiating what the camera attends to, enables, or silences, even when the final decisions are made elsewhere.

As both actor and producer, I experience the camera as reflecting the histories carried in my own body while connecting collective memory and creative expression, a bridge that joins local experiences to global conversations about memory, justice, and belonging. However, I never assume the role of spokesperson for Namibia’s diverse communities. Instead, I work in dialogue with them, recognizing that representation is always negotiated, shared, and incomplete. I am not neutral behind or before the camera. My positionality is deeply intertwined with the stories I help tell. My belonging is personal yet shared, shaped by a collective history, by communities who continue to negotiate what it means to see and be seen, to remember and to represent, and to create meaning.

Sophie: My work as a producer has evolved alongside Kaudife’s. I was born and raised in Germany to a German Hungarian mother and a Congolese father who immigrated during the wave of socialist solidarity and Pan-Africanism in the 1960s. My dual African and European upbringing taught me early on how colonial histories transcend borders, shaping daily life with both opportunity and exclusion. As a producer in Namibia, I’ve worked with artists, activists, and community elders to create safe spaces for dialogue, bringing together church leaders, youth, and knowledge keepers to confront trauma and imagine creative futures. Initially, these conversations were inspired by our collaboration with the broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) on trauma-informed storytelling in Colombia and South Africa.^[6] We continued this process locally, holding dialogues with elders on the church’s role in healing and hosting discussions at CIIA in Windhoek as well as in our home, where cultural practitioners, researchers, and artists gathered to exchange ideas.

From Extraction to Co-creation: Shifting Power in Practice

African artists too often appear in Western-funded projects as tokens of “diversity,” yet remain excluded from decision-making. Across the continent, we have encountered projects where communities were filmed on location but post-production took place entirely abroad, or where artists contributed research, interviews, or performances, yet contractual frameworks prevented them from reviewing edits or having any overall editorial “power.” For instance, in one southern African project we are familiar with, editors abroad removed key community perspectives due to time constraints, despite the participants’ requests to be consulted first. These are not isolated cases. They reflect systemic structures that shape many international collaborations.

While extractive models are common in international collaborations, our experience with Repatriates, particularly the doll-making workshop, was notably different. Here, we were trusted to design the workshop, determine how funds would be allocated locally, and define the outputs in ways responsive to Namibian participants. This autonomy enabled a process grounded in local relationships rather than externally predefined deliverables.

At the same time, the broader collaboration was not without friction. Working across continents, institutions, and expectations means navigating differences in pace, communication, and decision-making that reflect wider structural tensions in transnational cultural projects. These dynamics shape how “co-creation” unfolds in practice. Rather than hinting at individual shortcomings, we highlight them, because they are symptomatic of systemic patterns: even in well-intentioned partnerships, local practitioners often carry the emotional and logistical weight of making projects and processes legible to multiple audiences while negotiating uneven power dynamics, visibility, and recognition.

We seek to counter that extractive model by embedding co-creation at every stage of our work. Before editing the CCPECF film, we convened elders, youth leaders, historians, and artisans across Namibia. These gatherings became the foundation for our film’s structure. Participants defined the key questions and influenced both content and cinematographic approach. We filmed these meetings primarily for documentation, not for inclusion in the final film, and produced a report and photographic record that were shared with participants.

Co-creation, however, is not always seamless. The doll-making workshop, for instance, required navigating practical imbalances as simple as material availability and as complex as differing expectations about authorship. Stakeholders in Namibia have repeatedly highlighted recurring challenges, from extractive collaborations and “toxic empathy” to visa inequalities and the emotional strain of working with traumatic histories.^[7] These realities shape how co-creation can be practiced in the first place, reminding us that equity is not only an intention but also a structural necessity.

For Repatriates, this meant remaining attentive to how decisions about documentation, presentation, and narrative framing could reinforce or unsettle these dynamics. In practice, this played out in small but significant ways. Some artisans preferred not to have certain ritual gestures or practices filmed. It was jointly decided to have their dolls photographed only after a collective discussion at the end. We adjusted accordingly, turning the filming or photographing into a negotiated act rather than a default expectation. These micro-negotiations became as important as the workshop outcomes themselves. The workshop became an opportunity to practice co-creation within a more contained structure: artisans determined the narratives of their dolls, students navigated collaboration across generations and regions, and decisions about what was filmed or photographed were made collectively in the room.

For us, co-creation is not an ideal achieved, but a practice of friction and persistence within unequal systems of cultural production.

 

Confronting Power, Unearthing Voice

Documentary film has long been complicit in reinforcing colonial hierarchies, privileging “expert” commentary over lived experience. We intentionally invert that hierarchy. Our CCPECF film begins and ends with local voices—Namibians reflecting on the meaning of restitution rather than Western academics who approach the topic from an outside position. This structure compels audiences to question their own positionality: Who defines meaning? Who curates the archive? How is silence shaped by power and how does silence reinforce it?

By foregrounding community expertise and knowledge passed down orally, we challenge the notion that legitimacy must come from written or institutional sources. In the CCPECF project, that approach translated into working closely with community researchers, artisans, and cultural practitioners whose lived knowledge shaped both the process and the narrative. Among those filmed were poets and local researchers, some from academic backgrounds and others directly connected to the communities of the returned cultural belongings, each sharing stories that linked memory, craftsmanship, and cultural continuity. Their testimonies reframed restitution not as a bureaucratic act but as an ongoing dialogue rooted in community voices.

This approach also shaped our contribution to Repatriates. Although the doll-making workshop did not produce a final film, the same principles guided our documentation. Here, the “voices” were the fourteen artisans and fourteen UNAM students who brought their knowledge, lived memories, and personal interpretations to the making of their dolls. Their stories, ranging from childhood rituals and regional crafting techniques to the spiritual significance carried by materials, defined what was recorded and how. In this context, the workshop itself became a site, where intergenerational knowledge, embodied practices, and local expertise were centered, rather than curated.

The response to the CCPECF film has been deeply affirming, particularly among artists and researchers from the global majority, who felt empowered by the way the collaborators interviewed in the documentary openly addressed power imbalances. One tangible outcome has been a call for clearer frameworks that protect Namibian practitioners. CIIA has begun working toward such standards, advocating for transparency, equitable funding structures, and fair processes of accountability.

 

Toward Transformative Restitution: Tide of Returns

We understand genuine restitution as a living practice rather than a checklist. It must be transformative, not symbolic. Returning objects is only meaningful when communities gain tools and autonomy to preserve, interpret, and innovate their own heritage. It must also be grounded in justice and dignity, involving ethical funding, skill-sharing, and transparency rather than tokenistic gestures of “cultural diplomacy.” Our process insists on mutual respect, requiring Western institutions to cede curatorial authority and recognize the expertise of descendant communities. Above all, it is rooted in agency, ensuring that storytelling and interpretation are led by those to whom the heritage belongs.

These principles shape our filmmaking and curatorial gestures, countering extractive and representational practices that have long defined processes of repatriation and alleged co-creation. Our approach to restitution and filmmaking is grounded in co-creation at every stage, transforming participants into coauthors and redefining authorship as a collective act of interpretation. Shared ownership of footage and edits democratizes narrative power, ensuring that communities retain a stake in how their stories circulate. Through workshops and cocurated exhibitions, creation becomes an act of learning, blending art, research, and engagement. Establishing local editing suites strengthens creative sovereignty, enabling Namibian editors and advisors to shape both the narrative tone and ethical framing. Finally, reciprocal screening rights guarantee that represented communities can host and benefit from the films, turning screenings themselves into acts of return.

Co-creation is demanding, slower, costlier, and more complex, but these investments are essential. Without them, claims of decolonial practice risk remaining surface-level. In the Repatriates doll-making workshop, these principles took on a tangible, material form. Rather than arriving with a preset framework, we invited the fourteen artisans and fourteen UNAM students to lead the process: to decide what they wanted to make, which stories should accompany their dolls, and how much of that process should be documented. Many of the most meaningful moments unfolded in conversation while hands were busy with thread, hide, beads, and plant fibers. In this way, the workshop became a space where making and meaning-making happened simultaneously, and where documentation followed the pace set by the participants.

Laimi Kakololo is a Namibian textile and jewelry artist with a Diploma in Visual Art and a Bachelor of Arts Honors, whose work bridges traditional craft and contemporary material practices, engaged with the process in especially meaningful ways. Having worked with her beyond the initial workshop, we witnessed how the act of making opened up layers of memory and embodied knowledge, renewing connection to practices she has long carried but does not always articulate formally.

Co-creation here means allowing each voice to define its own form of expression, ensuring that artisans’ stories remain paired with their creations, and treating the dolls not only as objects but as vessels of lived knowledge. Our role was to provide the space, support the process, and document only what participants consented to share, translating the principles of restitution, agency, dignity, and creative sovereignty into an embodied artistic practice grounded in the makers themselves. We did not put together a final polished film, which would have required us to reinterpret the artisans’ work, but rather let the footage and the dolls speak for themselves.

 

Biographies

Kaudife Haikali is a Namibian filmmaker, director, and producer dedicated to telling African stories with authenticity and depth. As the founder and director of Joe Vision Production, he has made significant contributions to Namibia’s film industry through feature films, documentaries, and training initiatives. His projects address themes of intergenerational trauma and social transformation, including the Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Director winner PEPE (2024), which is the Dominican Republic’s Oscar entry for best international feature film, and the box-office success My F*k, Marelize! (2025). His latest documentary, Netumbo: A Leader Beyond Politics (2025), examines Namibia’s first female president and the nation’s path toward renewal. Haikali also cofounded the Creative Industry Guide and Propaganda Prop Shop, further enriching Namibia’s creative ecosystem. He holds a master’s degree in film, with research focused on the sustainability of Namibia’s film industry.

 

Sophie Haikali is an award-winning filmmaker and producer with over a decade of experience in film and media. Based in Namibia, she specializes in international co-productions spanning documentaries, television, and feature films. Her credits include The Daily Show (Comedy Central, US), The British Tribe Next Door (Channel 4, UK), Atlánticas (Spain), and My F*k, Marelize! (Namibia/South Africa). She produced Netumbo: A Leader Beyond Politics (2025) and PEPE (2024), which won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale and became the Dominican Republic’s Oscar entry for best international feature film. Haikali holds a master’s degree in media culture from Maastricht University and a bachelor’s degree in media studies from the University of Namibia.

Together, they continue to explore the intersections of memory, healing, and creative sovereignty, reimagining storytelling as a process of reclamation, dialogue, and transformation.

 

^[1] CCPECF is a Namibian heritage initiative launched under the Museums Association of Namibia (MAN), in partnership with the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and many others, to address colonial legacies in museum collections through repatriation, training, and decolonial collaboration. The initiative led to the return of twenty-three cultural belongings from the Berlin museum in 2022, strengthening national capacity in conservation and curation. Its offshoot, ARCK, brought together Namibian organizations, artists, artisans, and community knowledge keepers to reinterpret the narratives embedded in these repatriated belongings through creative practices such as poetry, performance, sculpture, and painting, fostering communal reflection and new ways of engaging with heritage. The project culminated in an exhibition in April 2024 at the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) and the symbolic signing over of the twenty-three cultural belongings.

^[2] See our short documentary film Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures (2025), posted on November 14, 2025, by Joe Vision Production, YouTube video, https://youtu.be/HntFVxmook8.

^[3] CIIA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the growth and sustainability of cultural and creative industries across Africa and its diaspora.

^[4] Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation is a historical drama directed by Charles Burnett and produced by the Namibia Film Commission (NFC) and the Pan-African Centre of Namibia (PACON). Inspired by Where Others Wavered (2001), the autobiography of Sam Nujoma, Namibia’s founding president, it portrays Namibia’s fight for independence. It is the largest Namibian film made to date.

^[5] Der vermessene Mensch (Measures of Men) is a German historical drama written and directed by Lars Kraume and produced by Zero One Film. Sophie and Kaudife Haikali were executive producers. The film depicts the German colonial war against the Herero and Nama from 1904 to 1908 through the perspective of a young German ethnologist, exposing the violent logic of racial science. It was the first feature film to center the genocide in Namibia. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, sparking a debate over colonial history, memory, and the portrayal of both.

^[6] The collaboration with DW Akademie was part of a needs assessment and analysis of the 2023 framework “Coping with Trauma Through Film,” which had been developed for South Africa and Colombia. Conducted with Namibian media and creative professionals, the assessment examined how trauma-informed approaches could be locally adapted to strengthen ethical storytelling, psychosocial well-being, and healing. It revealed that, although Namibian filmmakers, creative practitioners, academics, and civil-society organizations frequently engage with collective trauma, few structured frameworks exist to support this work. These findings informed our continued engagement with film as both a space of confrontation and a potential medium for healing in Namibia.

^[7] The idea of “toxic empathy” emerged during an interview Kaudife Haikali conducted with the Namibian scholar and creative practitioner Patrick Sam on October 25, 2023. Sam used the term to describe situations in which well-intentioned white allies take on the role of interpreting or advocating for restitution debates, thereby unintentionally shifting attention and authority back to themselves. In his view, this overidentification, framed as solidarity, can reproduce the same hierarchies it seeks to undo.