Vincent Moloi, dir. Skulls of My People

Negotiating the German colonial past remains intensely contested. This is the central message of Skulls of My People, a feature-length documentary by South African filmmaker Vincent Moloi that aired on the Al Jazeera English Witness program. The film follows the story of the Herero in Namibia, who seek proper apologies and reparations for the 1904–1908 genocide of the Herero and Nama people committed by the German colonial army. They do so from two angles, as Moloi’s film tells us. For example, first, the film takes its title from the skulls of murdered Herero that were shipped to Germany in the early twentieth century, where they remained stored in university and museum collections. Although some human remains have been repatriated over the past few years to Namibia, most notably from the famous Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin hospital and the University of Freiburg, associations such as the Ovaherero/Ovambanderu Genocide Foundation and its German allies—a range of postcolonial initiatives—continue the battle for full repatriation, fighting against continuing partial denial on the part of German institutions

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