Didi Cheeka

Memory Also Die

Didi Cheeka

Memory Also Die, the first part of a trilogy that focuses on memory as political taboo, comes fifty years after the collective trauma responsible for the death of memory in Nigeria: Biafra. What is it about the present that makes us unwilling to let the past go? Among the Igbo-speaking people of eastern Nigeria there exists a word: “Echezona,” which simply means “never forget.” There is the possibility of a deeper meaning – the way it is used in these films: it is taboo to forget. Using appropriated archival film footage layered with personal text, the film takes as its point of departure the old idea that the personal is political – in the sense that collective forgetting is a politically sponsored act.