A Story Of Bones
It tells the story of Annina van Neel's as she works to reclaim and honor the neglected history of St. Helena after the remains of thousands of formerly enslaved Africans are uncovered on the remote island.
A Story of Bones, Joseph Curran, Dominic Aubrey de Vera
“Despite the tomb being empty, it is a popular spot with visitors, who like to experience the peace of this quiet place and spend a little time contemplating the life of Napoleon.” Reads St Helena Island’s official information website, the remote island is best known or being where Napoleon spent his final years in exile and was ultimately buried; The tab now boasts an excess of ten thousand views. The same Napoleon who in 1802 revoked France’s law of 4 February 1764 which had abolished slavery.
“I’m standing on the most significant trace of the transatlantic slave trade, and there’s nothing to show that” Exclaims lead Annina van Neel who, upon discovering the remains of thousands of “freed slaves” campaigns to honour their legacy and integrate them into the history of the island. Communicating through diary-like narration Van Kneel and directors Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere’s non linear approach to storytelling illustrates the fluidity of time and its juxtaposition between established perspective on black history and the inability to act on it.
A Story of Bones’ relentless contrasts between St Helen’s history and how it wants to utilise it to better it economically and socially, and the subsequent spiral into political discourse finds Curran and de Vere forced as filmmakers to characterise every scene with a desperate melancholy. Close ups of Van Kneel standing in front of the temporary resting place of 325 exhumed freed slaves turns her intimate struggle into a spectacle of despair; A Story of Bones is at its best when it quietly contemplates the demons Van Kneel frequently exercises she’s battling, exclaiming “Black lives don’t matter. End of story.
“A Story of Bones is at its best when it quietly contemplates the demons Van Kneel frequently exercises she’s battling”
However, “What she thought was a local struggle is a global one” Exclaims the member of a meeting at Manhattan’s African Burial Ground National Monument. Van Kneel’s narrative, until she meets activist Peggy King Jorde, is lonely; Curran and de Vere’s reservations to fetishize Van Kneel’s activism as a one woman battle but instead a cog in a global machine of those against the same ignorance prevents A Story of Bones from threatening to tread the same ground its formers. Making the reveal of this community rewarding and earned.
“When you don’t know your past it’s really difficult to move forward.” A Story of Bones’s mature storytelling ensures that its ideological milieu refrain from drowning amongst the films context. A Story of Bones isn’t stylised – it follows regular people attempting to achieve something they deserve and the realism only hardens the blow at the realisation that they may never get it, emphasised by a closing shot of Rupert’s Valley once more, unchanged.
Release Date: August 2nd 2024 (Limited)
Director(s) Joseph Curran, Dominic Aubrey de Vera
Producer Mike Brett, Lucie Kon, Lisa Marie Russo, Steve Jamison
Cinematography Joseph Curran
Editor James Scott Distributor Tull Stories
Runtime: 95 minutes