ABSTRACT

The film Belle was inspired by a representation of Dido Elizabeth Belle in a painting by portrait artist David Martin that has enjoyed wide circulation as of late. The film constructs a problematic fictional narrative around Belle’s historical presence—an exceptional presence—about which more reliable information has yet to be acquired. Through a range of representational strategies, however, the film successfully creates an illusion of authenticity that has been widely consumed and additionally fuelled by reviewers and history didacts. This chapter interrogates a culture that foregrounds mythologies to the detriment of debates about historical responsibility in the context of the Black diasporic experience. It offers insights into the regimes of representation evident in the consumption of the film as well as a close reading of the film’s strategies of narration, aestheticisation, and authentification of an almost—albeit not entirely—lost (hi)story. In its subtext, the contribution articulates the need for a valorisation of responsible collaborative, transdisciplinary, transnational archival research and of debates that acknowledge the importance of ambivalence, complexity, and sometimes controversy over consensus and closure.