Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah's Public Toilet Africa is exclusively showing on MUBI in most countries starting August 9, 2022, in the series Festival Focus: Locarno Film Festival.
Amansa Tiafi (Public Toilet Africa) is a personal manifesto—a libation to the spirit and memory of persons who continue to inspire my practice. I am honored to participate in the poetics of refusals that marked the work and life of the architects of the freedoms enjoyed by many on the African continent—It is my place in a larger narrative often told on our behalf with troubling consequences.
Public Toilet Africa is many things to me—It is the little girl balancing a full bowl of a dozen bagged waters on her head hands-free, doing 20 miles an hour, racing down the highway in her worn-out chalewote (flip-flop slippers), her feet in direct contact with the scathing asphalt. Her determination to sell one bagged water in the sweltering heat of Accra’s notorious traffic to a motorist knows no limit, and she will even count change in the process—still hands-free.
Public Toilet Africa is also the spectacle of the desperate taxi driver on his knees on a back road in Accra. His only transgression is another man’s opinion on his adherence to some traffic etiquette—yes, there’s a lot of begging to just get through a day.
In plain language, Public Toilet Africa is the absence of a choice, it is the life of the powerless. It is standing in a queue waiting your turn to wash your body and empty your bowels. And while I do not claim to directly share in this day-to-day experience, I, too, bear the shame of the poor, for I have been a passive onlooker to their plight. In that regard, I am no different from a society that denies their existence.
But how can I go on without telling of the resilience, and the undying optimism of the people—Public Toilet Africa is also that story—a symbol of courage and defiance against all odds. And I singularly own the irreverence of being the messenger.