The 2024 documentary Record Found Here opens with narration, against the image of the sun setting over the Abeokuta landscape. Filmmaker Lanaire Aderemi’s voice tells the audience about her grandmother’s story of the Egba women’s revolt, setting the tone for the film’s main goal: Aderemi wants us to “see the unseen, know the unknown and learn our resistant history anew.” It’s a project that takes the audience on an intimate journey into the past, giving new perspectives on the enduring effects of human memory.
Record Found Here is a film that puts a spotlight on the 1940s Egba women’s revolt, in Nigeria. The harsh taxation on the women of Abeokuta by Nigeria’s colonial government led to a massive protest, with the women calling for an end to the oppressive practice. The taxes heavily impacted market women, who could not afford to pay those fees, and the activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti played an important role in rallying them.
In the documentary, Aderemi interviews several people who were around at the time of the revolt, getting firsthand accounts of how it came to be. The interviewees detail the rising stress of the women affected, and how they were forced to sell at night to avoid taxation. They speak on how Ransome-Kuti began to mobilise some of the women, helping empower them by teaching them how to read and calculate the profits they should earn, before subtly mentioning the taxation issue. Some of the film’s interviewees give a rendition of an old song used to mock the Alake of Abeokuta, one of many that ridiculed the Oba who would not hear the women’s please.
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