“Da Mina,” A Film Screening

"Da Mina", A Film Screening, with Kinglsey Lims Nyarko, Columbus College of Art & Design.

Kingsley Lims Nyarko, is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, cinematographer, educator, and creative scholar whose work explores culture, identity, memory, migration, and the African diaspora. He is Chair and Assistant Professor of Film & Video at Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), where he integrates professional filmmaking with experiential education and mentorship. His documentary and narrative work has received multiple Telly Awards and has been presented through academic, festival, and community platforms. His current feature documentary, Da Mina, examines the interior slave trade, Elmina Castle and the enduring legacy of the transatlantic slave trade through questions of memory, history, and cultural identity. Nyarko’s creative practice is rooted in using cinema as a means of preserving stories, confronting historical erasure, and creating dialogue between Africa and its diaspora.

Da Mina is a feature documentary exploring the enduring effects of the transatlantic slave trade while turning attention toward a less-told part of its history: the interior networks through which enslaved Africans were captured, traded, and moved toward the coast. Filmmaker Kingsley Lims Nyarko reflects on local participation, historical responsibility, memory, and the complex relationship between Africa and its diaspora. Connecting this history to contemporary conversations around acknowledgment, reparatory justice, reconciliation, and welcoming the diaspora home, the presentation asks what confronting difficult histories can teach us, and how honest remembrance might create pathways toward understanding, healing, and reconnection.

The CIS Thursday Forum is a weekly series focusing on international research, scholarship and creative activity for the OHIO community.