Memory, Authenticity, and (the Absence of) Ruins: Resonances between Werner Herzog and John Akomfrah

This essay engages in a contrapuntal reading of John Akomfrah’s Testament (1988) and Werner Herzog’s Cobra Verde (1987), considering their respective strategies of dealing with issues of memory and identity. This way of reading the two filmmakers’ works reveals unexpected angles of both films through juxtapositions that may illuminate in a new way the objects of comparison—not in their absolute irreducibility or un-translatability but rather in their most resonant moments. In particular, I explore how Akomfrah’s film, in contrast to Herzog’s historical fiction, addresses the memories of individuals and the traces left unacknowledged in their lived experiences.