Onyeka Igwe’s recent film “the names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered” (2019) explores the legacy of the artist’s grandfather, who is depicted, in an famous Igbo novel, performing a ritual to atone for his employer’s discretion of the land. This figure is fragmented both in history and in memory, and Igwe pieces together her own understanding of this story by exploring the sum of its parts. She examines archival images, personal recount, interviews with family members, exploration in moving image archives, representations in Nollywood dramas and embodiment through movement to unpack the many representations of this figure.

A discussion following the film will be moderated by members of EMILIA-AMALIA, a Toronto-based feminist exploratory working group who examine and employ practices of citation, annotation, questioning, interviewing and autobiography as essential strategies that activate feminist art, writing and research practices. The post-film discussion will explore how legend is passed on through various forms of intergenerational knowledge transfer, such as oral history and images, and adaptations into popular culture and media. The discussion will also focus on how techniques of movement, embodiment and the sensorial can be used to unearth and revisit past states of being, as well healing memories of trauma.