Martin Ambara (Othni)
Sundeita Keita und die Manden Charta
The thesis of the evening is: Human rights were invented in Africa - more than seven hundred years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948 in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris!
In the summer of 2022, the Cameroonian theater maker Martin Ambara and his team embarked on a research trip through Guinea, along the meandering paths of history, to find out something about the story of the "Lion King" Sundeita Keita and his charter of the Mandes. As early as the 13th century, this contained a preamble in which social peace in diversity and the inviolability of human beings were recorded. The existence of the charter means locating the origins of the idea of human rights in Africa - or at least abandoning the claim that human rights originated in Europe or in the West.
On their journey, Martin Ambara and his team conducted interviews with the last living griots, the narrators of the stories surrounding the Manden Charter. They present the material and reflections on it in a performative lecture with music, dance and extensive video material, thus challenging the audience to correct the post-colonial clouded view of the African continent and its history. Language: French with German live translation
