For hundreds of years, elder women across various regions of the African continent have been stripping naked in protest and invoking their magical powers to forcefully intervene when their communities, villages or entire nations are severely threatened. The protests are rooted in complex methods and animist world constructions that connect the metaphysical and supernatural, with consequences for the so-called factual world. In collaboration with a community of initiated women in Lomé, Togo, the hybrid Afrofeminist film THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE… LET IT BURN aims to contribute a decolonial animist perspective to current political discourses and to knowledge productions beyond the paradigm of constant objectification.
Ines Johnson-Spain is an independent German/Togolese filmmaker and author based in Berlin.
