One Day Tafo

Documentary: 70 minutes. 1991. A personal exploration of connections between Africa and Europe.

One Day Tafo is a uniquely poetic film, transcending generally accepted form. Being half Danish, half Ghanaian – and thereby a consequence of a marriage of cultures – the filmmaker embarks on a spiritual exploration of what connects people and peoples. It is a film which goes beyond the socio-political and anthropological issues seen in most films about Africa and its relationship to the Developed World.

Through the intimacy of a personal perspective, we are taken to Tafo, a small town in the Akim area of Ghana. This was where the filmmaker spent his early childhood, before moving to Denmark with the family at the age of five.The family situation in Tafo provides a strikingly effective micro-cosmic view of the general transition from the Colonial to the modern world. This view is then re-enforced by the reaction of the filmmaker to his early childhood home, after nearly thirty years.

By incorporating footage shot by his Danish father in the 50s with both documentary and fictional sequences, the end result is a film in which these genre definitions become irrelevant and obsolete.

Whilst experiencing the legacy of slavery, the intimacy of the changes in the former family home, the harsh realities of contemporary life, and a living traditional parable, we travel on a journey through heart and mind, a journey in which we glide effortlessly between inner and outer worlds.