Documentary film by Dr. Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong premieres in Wageningen on Friday

On Friday 6 December 2024, the Visum Mundi Screen Theatre in Wageningen, Gelderland, will host the premiere screening of the documentary film: The Embodied Absence of the Past: tourism’s intersection with slavery and colonial heritage memories in the Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands triangle. This is a film by Dr. Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong

This documentary film is part of the outcomes of three-year research by Dr. Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong of Wageningen University and Research. Funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), his research explored how tourism transforms and narrates the shared heritage and memories of the slavery and colonial past between Ghana, Suriname and the Netherlands. Starting off with the slavery apologies issued by the Dutch King, Prime Minister and Mayor of Amsterdam, the documentary raises questions about what these apologies mean for the places associated with this shared past.

The documentary film takes the viewer on a storytelling journey through sites like the Elmina Castle and Slave Dungeons in Ghana, Fort Zeelandia and Plantation Resort Frederiksdorp in Suriname and the many sites in Amsterdam which are the focus of the Black Heritage Amsterdam Tours.

At these sites tourism opens the past to highlight our shared interconnections. The film shows how tourism can stimulate new narratives and plural public memories in ways that challenge established narratives about the past, identity and belonging. Sometimes, tourism can also create and amplify frictions in places associated with the slavey and colonial past due to the clash of narratives and remembrances practices.

This documentary films show how in our increasing diverse society the stories we tell about the past can bring us together or pull as apart. Tourism is a worldmaking force which offers an opportunity of tell stories of our past for reshaping the socio-cultural imaginary of people, places and events. The documentary calls on the viewer to consider how their own stories connect to the next person and to the city they call home. In the end, tourism spaces can help us come to terms with our shared past and importantly how to related in our shared present and how to build our shared future together.

This premiere screening is the part of a half day of programme called – The Calabash Onder de Bigi Bon – which seeks to celebrate the end of 3-year project and to commemorate the shared transatlantic heritage of Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands through film, music, arts and food.

About Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong

Dr. Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Geography at Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the international Tourism Planning and Development Journal and a Senior Research Associate at the School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

He works at the intersection of cultural geography, critical tourism studies, critical heritage studies and cultural memory studies. He is currently PI for the 1.5 million euros ERC Starting Grant project (2025-2030) Frictions of Space: the generative tensions of slavery and colonial heritage tourism. He was previously PI for the Dutch National Research Council (NWO) funded Veni project: The Embodied Absence of the Past: Slavery, Heritage and Tourism in the Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands Triangle. He earned a PhD from the University of Sheffield, UK, and three MSc degrees from King’s College London, UK, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Netherlands and Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, Spain. He holds a BA Sociology & Social Work from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana.