“Without light there would be no vision. With light there is vision. But light doesn’t provide vision. When someone says ‘Throw more light on it,’ it means explain more, so that we can understand. So light means knowledge, and that knowledge we can not take for granted.” - Chris Hesse
The Eyes of Ghana, a 2025 film, directed and co-produced by Oscar-award winning, Ben Proudfoot. The film’s premiere was on September 4, 2025, and it has screened at various film festivals, most recently the DOC NYC film festival in New York City.
The film tells the story of is told primarily through the lens of the charismatic and witty 90 year-old Chris Hesse, a former cameraman suffering from early on stage glaucoma through his recount of Kwame Nkrumah administration in Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah was first prime minister in the liberated Ghana, and is considered one of the forefounders in dozens of African countries liberation from European and Western colonial rule. During his administration, Hesse was assigned to serve as the personal cameraman for Kwame Nkrumah.
The Eyes of Ghana, chronicles the struggle of Ghana, the first South African nation to claim independence from European imperialism. It teaches audiences of Nkrumah’s vision for pan-Africinism and reveals a history that was literally burned out of existence by Nkrumah’s successors. Additionally, it challenges internalized Western misconceptions about Africa, exploring the sovereignty of an African nation. At its core it is a reclamation of lost history, and an anthem to use past mistakes to positively change the future. The film does this by shedding light on both Chris Hesse’s story as a Ghanaian filmmaker and Ghana’s liberation from colonial power.
Hesse’s interview, along with 15 minutes of his recently digitized original footage, captures the scope and impact of the liberation of Ghana. His work encapsulates the rise and fall of Nkrumah prime ministry reign, and the recolonization of Ghana through Neo-colonialism, all spanning from 1952 to 1966.
Despite his age and the trials of his life, he is as sharp as a whip, with a memory eerily photographic in its own right. From his strong deposition and word choice, it becomes clear his passion for filmmaking and the preservation of film. He’s unafraid to be witty and snarky as well as vulnerable and realistic. Hearing his story delivered in such a manner, accompanied with vibrant colors and introspective visuals was an honor.
“Kwame Nkrumah became the fire of Africa. He was one of the most famous people in the world. But he created enemies too, who wanted to stop him. And the coup markers order that everything should be burned. Records, documents, anything to do with Kwame Nkrumah. They burned them. And they burned all the films…To wipe out the story of Kwame Nkrumah forever. But, the coup makers had no knowledge that all the negatives were safely kept in London."
Through Hesse’s interviews the film is able to convey multiple messages: the importance of cinema for capturing history and the liberation of Ghana.
Interspersed into Hesse’s anecdotes, are two more stories to round the film out. Anita Afonu, a young female Ghanaian filmmaker, who serves as Hesse’s protégé, an interviewee, and producer for this film. She offers her own perspectives on Hesse’s images and impact, and the reflection of Ghanaian history from the perspective of a young Ghanaian.
Edmund Addo, a former cinema projectionist at the formerly famous, currently abandoned Rex Theaters in Ghana. Addo reminisces on the glory days of projecting reels to the masses, and the role cinema played in his life from the perspective of a viewer. Having Addo’s perspective as the film viewer complimenting the perspectives of the two filmmakers, makes it clear to audiences the impact film can have on a person, whether they make it or watch it, as if cinema was some sort of double edged sword.
From these perspectives comes another theme of the film: the continued education of filmmaking and investment into cinema for the next generation so that it may become a tool for expressing Ghanaian stories by Ghanaians.
Audiences soon that despite capturing over 300 hours of essential footage of the political working during this African independence movement and Ghanaian history throughout the mid-20th century, as a result of the 1966 coup that dispositioned Nkrumah from governmental power, much of the Hesse’s footage has been lost or destroyed.
Here comes the final theme of film: The preservation and restoration of cinema so that it may preserve and restore history. From the beginning, the film stresses the importance and necessity of archival visuals of history, if not to pursue people to a particular view, to give validity and scope to an event.
But hope is still alive in the form of negatives, film negatives. Chris Hesse explains that due the Ghanaian climate typically being too hot to properly develop films there, all of his work and much of the other films coming out of Ghana at the time were transported to London to be developed. Hesse said “what they didn’t know was that the negatives were in London.”
As a result much of his archival footage has been preserved in the form of negatives in London museums and film rooms yet none of them are digitalized. The film advocates to digitalize all the remaining negatives of both Hesse and other cameramen’s work at the time. While the process seems too expensive for the Ghanaian government to take on themselves, this film still leaves hope that maybe one day this dream will come true, so that finally light can be shed on the great work of Chris Hesse.