Re:Vision: Dakan

This screening will open with Len Lye’s animated short film COLOUR BOX. The film was restored by San Francisco Film Preserve and scanned utilizing Scan2Screen’s multispectral scanning technology. The original elements are preserved at the British Film Institute. This restoration was undertaken in close collaboration with the Len Lye Foundation and Ngā Taonga National Archive.

Dakan follows two young men, Manga and Sori, as they navigate young love of a kind their families cannot abide. Seen by Manga’s mother as a mental illness, and Sori’s father as a weakness to overcome, both men struggle to live the “right way”. Self-denial, tradition and superstition merge in attempts to rid the young lovers of their passions.

This careful exploration of the realities of gay love in 1997’s Guinea depicts a milieu in which Manga and Sori’s contemporaries seem to understand and accept their gayness, while the older generation cannot, will not explore the possibility that their offspring might live lives outside of the ones set forth for them by their parents. Manga and Sori’s longing for each other, and pain at their separation, is depicted physically, making manifest the deep ache of young lovers wrested apart. Dakan is considered the first West African film to tackle the topic of homosexuality. It screened at Frameline in 1998, and won the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Foreign Narrative Feature at L.A. Outfest the same year.— Kathy Rose O’Regan

Copy courtesy of California Newsreel.

Dakan will screen with the following short:

NANCY, HENRI, AND ELIZABETH (Lynn Fagan and Bob Aibel, United States, 1973) 17m, DCP
Nancy, Henri, and Elizabeth (1973) is a 17-minute student documentary from the University of Pennsylvania interposing vignettes of the lived perspectives of two trans women and a bisexual drag queen. Long unavailable, the film is an important piece of LGBTQ film recovery. Ostensibly a time capsule of discussions around gender and sexual fluidity in 1970s America from within the gay, lesbian, and transgender community, the film ends up being a very personal triptych of transformational wisdom and matter-of-fact poise from those who find themselves in-between.

Nancy, Henri, and Elizabeth candidly reflect on pleasant and unpleasant ambiguities alike — essence, appearance, gender neutrality, a lover’s perception, or the brutality of surgical transition. They also meditate on certitude — social pasts, authentic desires, and inner motivations. Henri offers the profound lesson, dressed up as a casual exhortation: “There’s only one sin you can commit — only one — and that’s to die without living.” — Elise Schierbeek

Restored in 2025 by USC’s Hugh M. Hefner Foundation Moving Image Archive from original 16mm A-B negative rolls and 16mm optical track negative.